Nigeria wants proof polio vaccine is safe

By Glenn McKenzie
The Associated Press

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Three predominantly Muslim northern states have suspended door-to-door vaccinations since October, citing fears that the vaccine could cause infertility or AIDS and is part of a plot by the United States and its allies to depopulate Africa and other developing nations.

Nigeria accounts for about 40 percent of the approximately 700 children crippled by the disease last year. The United Nations says the outbreak has crossed into Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Burkina Faso and is threatening a global campaign to wipe out the crippling virus.

The mission announced yesterday will take the team to South Africa, Indonesia and India for a week to observe a battery of tests on the vaccine, Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said.

"We want all the stakeholders to see for themselves and be convinced about whether or not the polio vaccines are safe," he said. Tests initiated by the federal government were performed in Nigeria and South Africa late last year and proved conclusively the vaccines were free of all harmful substances, officials say.

But Muslim groups have rejected the results. Officials in the northern state of Kano insist their own scientists tested the vaccines and found trace amounts of estrogen and progesterone, female sex hormones which the officials feared could cause infertility.

Among the team's members is Lawal Bichi, head of pharmacology at Bayero University in Kano, who oversaw his state's testing of the vaccine.

"I am going in with an open mind. All the parties are interested in the health of the children and the eradication of polio," he said.

Bruce Aylward, Geneva-based global coordinator of the U.N. World Health Organization's polio-eradication campaign, stressed the vaccines had been repeatedly proven safe.

If any results showed hormones, these were "false positives" arising from improper testing methods or the mixing of foreign materials during the testing procedure, he said.

Even hormones at the levels alleged by critics would be "absolutely of no health consequence" and amount to less than the amount found naturally in breast milk, Aylward said.

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