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he controversy over the polio vaccination campaign in Nigeria started from the Internet. In mid-2003, members of the radical Islamic movement, the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (SCIA), learnt from some websites that the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) promoted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), had allegedly been deliberately contaminated with carcinogenic, anti-fertility and HIV inducing elements. Immediately, the leader of the group, Dr. Datti Ahmed, went on a massive and highly successful campaign to stop the OPV programme until the veracity of the allegations were investigated.
Such allegations would ordinarily not have been believable. How can an organisation with a clear mandate to promote good health, and an organisation as respected as the WHO, lace vaccines with a triple killer dose of contaminants that would cause cancer, spread the Aids virus and blight the reproductive power of the population? The political atmosphere in northern Nigeria, however, made the story
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sufficiently credible and it led to a formal investigation.
There is strong suspicion that there is a concerted campaign against Muslims led by the United States - a nation with sufficient power to use surrogate organisations to advance its objectives. It was also noted that polio was endemic only to the muslim parts of northern Nigeria and that 'Western organisations'
had not shown significant interest in addressing more serous and widespread diseases such as malaria. There had been reports in the past about UN agencies being used to serve the interests of some of their powerful members. Journalist Mohammed Haruna, for example, has recalled the case of how American investigative journalist Greg Palast reported that Monsanto, an American conglomerate, was able to suborn the WHO into giving a bovine
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growth hormone called BST a clean bill of health. This was despite the fact that BST, in the words of Haruna, was "known to increase the risk of breast and prostate cancer in humans who drink BST-laced milk." And there have been many similar conspiracy stories circulating in northern Nigeria. Finally, the commitment of the West to the promotion of family planning in the developing world is well known and people tend to look out for what they regard as surreptitious methods of family planning. As Haruna suggested in a column in January, the health, size and distribution of the world's population has become a major political issue.
Many states in the Muslim parts of northern Nigeria ordered a stop to the OPV campaign until the vaccine was thoroughly investigated. Eventually, the Jama'atul Nasril Islam (JNI), the umbrella body for Nigerian Muslims, under the leadership of the respected Sultan of Sokoto, decided to organise credible tests on the OPV in South Africa and India, as there were no sophisticated (continued below...)
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laboratories to carry out the tests in Nigeria. On January 24, the JNI presented the report of its investigations into the contents of the OPV to various groups, including a federal government team. The report affirmed that "the sampled OPV currently being used in the country had contaminants in them and such contaminants should not have been there and if they were there they ought to have been labelled according to good manufacturing practices, even if the concentration is low."
The report avoided dealing directly with the issues raised by the conspiracy theorists, while making it clear that the specific allegations made about the contaminants had not been proved in a demonstrable manner. Some respected doctors such as Professor Emeritus Umaru Shehu, who led the government medical team, argued forcefully that even if there were contaminants in the OPV, they were not of sufficient quantity to cause harm. The government said the OPV batch in contention had run out and gave gave assurance that the new imported batch would be free of contaminants.
he irony of the controversy is that there is consensus that the campaign against polio is vital. More than half of the world's children paralysed by polio last year were Nigerians. No party has expressed explicit opposition to the polio vaccination as such. The distribution of the OPV was part of an elaborate programme - the Global Polio Eradication Initiative launched by the WHO in 1988, covering 125 countries where the disease is endemic. By last year, the campaign, except in Niger, Nigeria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.
In January this year, the WHO released an alarming report that the polio strain prevalent in northern Nigeria had started spreading to surrounding countries where the disease had been eradicated. Polio had infected eight people in Ghana, seven in Burkina Faso, five in Chad and one each in Benin, Cameroon and Togo.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian government announced the launch of a new population policy aimed at reducing the country's birth rate to two per cent by, among other strategies, popularising the use of contraceptives - something that will increase suspicions among Muslims in northern Nigeria about the objectives of the polio vaccination programme.
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Muslim leaders fear that oral polio vaccinations pose health risks
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Polio Paranoia was published in the above
April-June 2004 issue of BBC - Focus on Africa
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