| WHO: Nigeria responsible for 'exporting' poliovirus to 19 countries |
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| Written by Empowered Newswire | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 27 August 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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LAOLU AKANDE, Empowered Newswire.
AN ANNUAL REPORT of the World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations, has cited Nigeria as being responsible for the spread of polio virus to 19 countries of the world which hitherto were free of the disease. Besides, Nigeria also got an infamous citation as one of the 20 examples of major chemical incidents in the world in the last two decades, specifically between 1974-2006.
Generally, Nigeria got a less than complimentary mention in this year's annual World Health Report released on Thursday by the World Health organization, WHO. The main issue for which Nigeria was criticised was the global impact of its "unexpected policy changes" in the area of public health security.
According to the full report of the annual report pinpointed the management of the 2003 oral polio vaccination which was suddenly halted in northern Nigerian states as now being responsible for the outbreak of polio in 19 countries in Africa, Asia and Middle East, countries previously free of the disease.
In 2003 as the report recalled, only seven countries in the world remained infected with the polio virus, namely: Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia. But the report lamented that "by the end of 2006, 19 polio-free countries...had experienced outbreaks traceable genetically to the Nigerian virus."
The result according to the WHO report was that those countries had to cough up medical cost in mass outbreak response activities of more than $450m because of the sudden policy change in Nigeria over the polio virus. The Kano State government in particular had halted the polio vaccination programme in 2003 on the flimsy excuse that it was not safe and could sterilize young children. This lead to other states following suit in the North causing substantial reductions in polio immunization in that part of Nigeria.
The World Health Report noted that the resultant effect of this sudden policy change in the area of public health security was a "large outbreak of poliomyelitis across northern Nigeria and the reinfection previously polio-free areas in the south of the country."
WHO went on to state that this outbreak "eventually paralysed thousands of children in Nigeria," adding that the disease then spread from northern Nigeria to polio-free countries.
It was however also reported that by July 2004, polio-immunization resumed in northern Nigeria "as a result of a tremendous collaborative effort" between state and federal authorities in Nigeria, efforts that also included religious and traditional leaders across the country. According to WHO such collaboration proved that "partnership that extend beyond the traditional discipline of health can bring tremendous change for the good of global public health security."
In August, 2003, Kano State government suspended the anti-polio immunization drive, sparking an uncontrolled polio epidemic. At the United Nations Secretariat then early 2004, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan dispatched Nigeria's former External Affairs Minister and then UN Special Adviser on Africa Prof. Ibrahim Gambari to the country to propel a resumption of a nationwide polio immunization drive as soon as possible. According to UN news release, the UN envoy traveled extensively across the country and met with top-level officials -- past and present-including former presidents as well as religious and traditional leaders. The WHO report also noted other range of threats to global public health security including "how inadequate investment in public health, resulting from a false sense of security in the absence of infectious disease outbreaks, has led to reduced vigilance and a relaxing of adherence to effecting prevention programmes." For instance, the report said after the widespread use of insecticides in large-scale, systematic control programmes, "by the late 1960s most of the important vector-borne diseases were no longer considered major public health problems outside of sub-Saharan Africa." However this led in the next 20 years to many vector-borne diseases including African trypanosomiasis, dengue, and dengue haemorrhagic fever, and malaria. The report also noted that the need for global solidarity in the response to outbreak of infectious diseases. According to Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General, "international public health security is both a collective aspiration and a mutual responsibility. The new watchwords are diplomacy, cooperation, transparency and preparedness." Nigeria was also cited in the report as one of the places around the world where a major chemical incident happened, referring to the 2002 explosion at the Munitions depot, which killed 1000 people according to WHO's own estimates Of the 20 chemical incidents, Nigeria had the second highest number of deaths, after India, which recorded in 1984, 2800 deaths from a chemical plank leakage in Bhopal involving Methyl isocyanate.
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Posted by Robot| 26.08.2007 22:30