UNITED NATIONS, March 17 (UPI) -- A special U.N. envoy said Wednesday Nigeria, the source of polio re-emergence in Africa, is preparing to re-launch its national eradication drive.
It was halted in face of rumors circulating in two northern, Muslim states the oral vaccine was part of a "family planning" plot by anti-Islamists.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan sent Ibrahim Gambari to help get Nigeria back on track after the northern state of Kano suspended an anti-polio drive last August, sparking a polio epidemic in the nation that spread to other central and western Africa nations.
As a result of the suspension, Nigeria represented 43 percent of all global polio cases, while the disease spread to eight formerly polio-free African countries, Gambari said.
Gambari went to encourage a nationwide polio immunization drive he hopes will restart as early as next week. The special envoy for polio eradication in Nigeria traveled extensively across the country.
A Nigerian committee is reporting on the safety of the oral polio vaccine, he said.
"While the contents are still confidential, the tone was quite positive," Gambaro said, adding that the report was sent to Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo.
"What we are hearing is that all the 23 members of the committee are signing on to its conclusion, and the conclusion appears to be positive," he told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.
Obasanjo is meeting with key leaders "to sensitize them to the contents of the report, the safety of the vaccine, and to lay the foundation for resuming immunization throughout the country," Gambari said.
When the campaign resumes -- "hopefully on March 22" -- Obasanjo has promised to personally go "house to house" to ensure that all children are vaccinated.
The envoy said he has appealed to all concerned in Nigeria to "reduce the level of rhetoric in the media on both sides" while the modalities of resuming the immunization drive were being worked out.
Gambari said that before the setback in Nigeria, "the goal of eradicating poverty and polio throughout the world was well on its way to being achieved. Unfortunately, the suspension of eradication activities in the northern state of Kano resulted in an uncontrolled polio epidemic."
The envoy said he conveyed three main concerns of the secretary-general:
"One, the efforts at global polio eradication suffered a serious setback because Nigeria was the center of that setback, for 43 percent of the global total and 87 percent of Africa's total of the new cases in 2003. The second concern was that since polio has reemerged it has spread to ... about eight other countries in western and Central Africa, thus making it a regional and international issue within the African continent. Thirdly, this setback will continue to divert scarce resources from very important issues and unnecessarily put an even greater burden on an area with limited resources."
Gambari told national and local leaders he visited he wanted to ensure anti-polio campaigns began nationwide in Nigeria as soon as possible and try to bring closure to the debate on oral polio vaccine.
The envoy said he met with six former heads of state of Nigeria, state governors, traditional rulers and religious leaders to help counter fears about the vaccine.
He said the still-confidential committee report on OPV safety was being presented the president.
"What we are hearing is that all the 23 members of the committee are signing on to its conclusion and the conclusion appears to be positive," Gambari said. "The president is now meeting with the 36 governors of the states of Nigeria plus (the capital of) Abuja and other traditional leaders to sensitize them to the contents of the report, the safety of the vaccine, and he is to lay the foundation for resuming the vaccination program throughout the country."
The envoy also said Obasanjo planned to host a meeting with health ministers "from polio affected countries in west and Central Africa, probably under the umbrella of the Economic Community of West African States, maybe in April, so as to exchange views on what everybody is doing, to ensure that immunization is resumed and to remove roadblocks to the global efforts to eradicate polio."
The committee was set up by the federal government in concurrence with the state governments to go to Indonesia, India and South Africa to test the vaccines.
"There have been some queries about estrogen found in some of the vaccines that were tested," Gambari said. "But now it has been shown scientifically that even if so, the levels found were insignificant and did not constitute a health hazard.
"For example in South Africa they found the level of estrogen in drinking water was about 100 times more than found in the some of the vaccines tested and mother's milk had 1,000 times more than the level found," he said. "In order for it to be a family planning tool, it would have to 5 million times the level found.
"In order to make sure concerns of lay people were met, traditional rulers and religious leaders were on the committee," the envoy continued. "The governor of Kano wanted his own scientific experts involved and included."
Explained Gambari, "If the federal government were to say 'Oh we have this all inclusive committee that reported,' case closed, but Kano still does not allow the recommencement of the immunization, then we have not made much progress. So the idea is to get everybody involved and convinced."
He added the influence of those against immunization is getting weaker "in face of the evidence becoming stronger ands stronger."
