WHO: Polio Cases Rose by One-Third in 2004

GENEVA – The number of polio cases last year rose by almost one-third, despite a renewed immunization campaign in Nigeria after the end of a vaccine boycott, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

The 2004 worldwide case count reached 1,185, compared with 784 in 2003, the United Nations health agency said.

Most of the cases were in Africa – largely in Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation.

A vaccine boycott there spawned a resurgence of the disease across the continent, infecting children in formerly polio-free countries and hurting WHO-led attempts to eradicate the crippling disease by Dec. 31, 2005.

“It’s slowed the efforts for sure,” said Sona Bari, a spokeswoman for WHO’s Polio Eradication Initiative. “It’s going to take months to deal with the effects.”

Hardline Islamic clerics in Nigeria’s northern Kano state led the immunization boycott, claiming the polio vaccine was part of a U.S.-led plot to render Nigeria’s Muslims infertile or infect them with AIDS.

Vaccination programs restarted in Nigeria in July 2004 after local officials ended their 11-month boycott. WHO also boosted immunization across Africa.

Nigeria, which had 763 cases last year versus 355 the year before, is one of the six countries where polio is still considered endemic. The others are Niger (25 cases in 2004), Egypt (one case), and Afghanistan (4), India (129) and Pakistan 46.

Polio is a waterborne disease that usually infects young children, attacking the nervous system and causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and sometimes death.

When WHO launched its anti-polio campaign in 1988, the worldwide case count was more than 350,000.

Amid the vaccine boycott, the Nigerian-rooted virus spread to neighbor countries including Benin, Chad, and Cameroon. It also was exported further afield, to Botswana, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Togo and even Saudi Arabia.

Polio eradication efforts are now facing a US$100 million shortfall, largely because of the costs of responding to the Nigeria-fueled outbreak, said Bari.

However, WHO does not fear its polio campaign will lose out in the funding race because of the massive global focus on helping Asian countries hit by December’s tsunami disaster. “Our donors are on board for the long haul,” said Bari.

Efforts to defeat polio have also been hampered by civil war in Ivory Coast and Sudan, both hit by the Nigerian virus, said WHO. Experts are particularly worried the virus will spread from Sudan to Ethiopia and Congo – which also is in the grip of conflict.