Polio back in Nigeria despite having been declared no more

If Nigeria isn’t embarrassed, it never will, indicating a lack of national conscience. Of all diseases, polio is back.

Reuters news agency reported last week Nigerians were “stunned” in August when two cases of children being struck by polio in Bono state, former stronghold of Boko Haram insurgency.

That might turn out to be the tip of the iceberg.

As the news agency reported, “Experts estimate for every case of polio that paralyses its victim, 200 silent infections go undetected.”

For the record, polio, which is spread by a virus, is an easily preventable disease.

Children living in unsanitary conditions are most vulnerable.

What should embarrass Nigeria is that for nearly two years, the country, and even the continent, seemed to have eradicated polio.

In other words, the time in 2006, when Nigeria had a half of world’s new polio infection cases were gone.

That was accomplished through mass and often compulsory vaccination of children at certain ages.

For polio, the vaccination is painless: a drop in the mouth.

OPPOSITION
In all fairness, Nigeria has problems.

In the country’s north, some Muslim clerics are openly opposed to polio vaccination.

Early this year, they urged parents to prevent their children being vaccinated.

Some of the reasons these clerics gave would be laughable were it not that the consequences are serious.

One of the reasons given was the vaccination is a Western conspiracy to reduce Muslim population by causing infertility.

Forgotten was Osama bin Laden permitted his children and grandchildren to be vaccinated again polio, plausibly to contribute to the increase of a healthy Muslim population.

Another reason Nigerian clerics gave was the vaccine causes Aids.

Another problem is that in northeastern Nigeria — and Bono state is there — the Boko Haram insurgency makes it difficult for health workers to function.

Where they do armed vigilantes accompany them.

Incidentally northern Nigeria isn’t an exception.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are in a league of their own.

VALID REASONS

Being a health worker involve in polio vaccination amounts to signing a death warrant.

In Indonesia’s Ace Province, predominantly Muslim, 80 per cent of the population remains unvaccinated against polio.

People fear the vaccine might contain pig derivatives.

Again in fairness to Nigeria, controversies have plagued vaccines — actually most medical practices — since Edward Jenner carried out his experiment by inoculating a young man with cowpox to prevent smallpox infection in 1796.

Now, valid reasons exist for vaccines and, indeed pharmaceutical productions to be verified as completely safe before use.

Otherwise, they would cause worse epidemics than the ones they are meant to fight.

However, once a vaccine is proven safe to the point of its efficacy becoming a truism, there’s no reason not to go the Australian way: mandatory vaccination.

Period. A healthy population is a great national asset.

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