Crippling misinformation
3/7/2004
PUBLIC HEALTH workers have come tantalizingly close to eradicating polio from the face of the earth. Mass vaccinations in the developing world have reduced cases of this often crippling disease from 350,000 in 1988 to fewer than 1,000 last year. Now progress is being threatened by outbreaks in Africa, where Islamic leaders in northern states of Nigeria have blocked vaccinations since last fall, saying they are part of a US plot to spread AIDS or infertility among Muslims.
Few examples of the gulf of misunderstanding and misinformation between the Islamic world and the United States present such a danger to the well-being of millions. The World Health Organization and UNICEF have mounted an emergency effort with thousands of volunteers to try to stop the spread of the disease in Africa. Seven countries near Nigeria that had been free of polio have reported recent cases. UNICEF says the vaccine used in Nigeria is the same used elsewhere in the world without causing AIDS or infertility.
The Nigerian government, to its credit, has sponsored studies to prove the safety of the vaccine, but religious leaders still speak out against it, and popular resistance continues. In addition to a basic distrust of the United States, opposition to the antipolio campaign is fed by lingering resentment of an experiment with a meningitis medicine in one of the Nigerian states in the mid-1990s.
Families there said they were not fully informed of the risks of the medication. Pfizer, the maker of the antibiotic, denied any wrongdoing, but 20 Nigerians who claimed to have been disabled by it have sued in US courts.
Opposition to the polio vaccine also has its roots in the United States itself. According to Mohammad Jalloh, a UNICEF communications officer in New York, Nigerians get misinformation about the vaccine from US websites created by groups and individuals who are opposed to vaccines and claim they are linked to a range of conditions.
The struggle to overcome resistance to the polio vaccine is crucial not just to the campaign to eradicate this disease but to deal with others as well. If effective vaccines are ever developed to prevent such scourges in Africa as malaria and AIDS, they will not achieve full success if Africans have developed an irrational fear of these mainstays of modern public health.
Millions of Muslim families on different continents have allowed their children to be vaccinated against polio and have benefited from the protection it provides. Sadly, a minority within a religious group can have an impact far beyond its numbers when it comes to a public health campaign like this one. Children all over the world will lead healthier lives if WHO and UNICEF can win their struggle against superstition and fear. Millions of Muslim families on different continents have allowed their children to be vaccinated against polio and have benefited from the protection it provides. Sadly, a minority within a religious group can have an impact far beyond its numbers when it comes to a public health campaign like this one. Children all over the world will lead healthier lives if WHO and UNICEF can win their struggle against superstition and fear.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
