Weekly Trust (Kaduna)
Aisha Umar Yusuf
6 March 2004
The hope of all stakeholders in the oral polio vaccine saga, that a final stand will be reached after the report of the All-inclusive Final Verification Committee (AFVC) had been published, may have been dashed by the renewed debate on the issue.
But in a dramatic reversal of this apparent resolution of a lingering crisis, the said Dr Lawal Alhassan Bichi of Bayero University, Kano denounced the report that bore his name. He told Weekly Trust in Kano that he has no hand in the Punch report, and added that he was not the chairman of the committee as the publication claimed and therefore neither wrote nor signed the particular report. In an advertisement carried in the Punch newspaper of Friday, February 27th 2004, signed by two members of the committee, one Dr Lawal Alhassan Bichi (chairman) and A. Babatunde (secretary), the committee published the result of its verification tour of South Africa, Indonesia, and India; reaching the conclusion that the OPV was safe for use on Nigerian children.
Though the report admitted that the committee was still awaiting the test results from India, that did not stop it from publishing the fact that the OPV had been certified free of contaminants.
On his part, Dr Haruna Kaita, the pharmaceutical scientist who had all along stood by the results of earlier tests conducted by him in India, that the OPV was contaminated, has rejected the findings of the All-inclusive Final Verification Committee, saying "the report is not only unscientific, it is a joke. The report contains factual errors, fictitious and unscientific statements."
In an interview with Weekly Trust, Dr Kaita, who is also the Dean, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, enumerated the errors and unscientific statements as follows:
"It takes a single quote from the AFVC report to punch holes into the Punch's headline: Report confirms safety of polio vaccine." The line is: "The equipment showed that 6 samples out of 12 samples had trace levels of Estradiol above minimum quantifiable level." They failed to understand that 50 percent of the batches failed the test. We are dealing with a pharmaceutical product, OPV, and in pharmaceutical practice, any undeclared substance would automatically declare the product unwholesome, contaminated, adulterated and fake."
According to the ABU Don, "If the AFVC detected contaminants in the samples they tested, this renders the vaccine unsafe. Again the committee used unsuitable parameters and arrived at the wrong conclusion, HPTLC which I stated in my earlier report as unsuitable for this kind of analysis was adopted by the committee as a finality. What a shame."
He added further that he did not submit any samples of OPV to the verification committee for analysis as indicated in the report.
While this new debate continues, sparked on by the report of findings of the AFVC as published in the Punch newspaper, what seems obvious is that a final word is unlikely to be heard when all stakeholders meet on Monday. The questions to ask therefore are:
Will relunctant governments, especially those of Kano, Zamfara and Kaduna who had suspended the vaccination exercise, finally give in? And above all, would confused parents be convinced enough to allow their children to be administered with the polio vaccines?
The entire episode began as an AOB (Any Other. business) topic at the Jama'atul Nasril Islam meeting of July 21st, 2003 when one of the Emirs presented a memo on the concerns and apprehensions of his people on the allegations that the polio vaccination campaign was being used for the purpose of depopulating developing countries, and especially Muslim countries.
Although some of the more senior emirs tried to dismiss the observation as mere rambling by their subjects, the Supreme Council on Sharia implementation in Nigeria led by a respected Kano-based medical doctor, Dr Datti Ahmed brought the apprehensions into full public glare when it announced at a press conference in Kaduna that the government should suspend the entire polio vaccination exercise until those fears were addressed. He told newsmen that his council had reasons to suspect contamination of the polio vaccines with HIV/AIDS virus, anti-fertility substances and other dangerous elements.
The Kaduna State government, concerned about the number of people rejecting the vaccines, set up a committee of experts to test the vaccines for contaminants in order to allay the fears of people on the polio campaigns. The result of that test however heightened the fears of the public as the vaccines were scientifically proven to have anti-fertility effect on women and men.
The Kaduna test results led three states to suspend the vaccination exercise which was about to begin then, and ask for further tests by the Federal Ministry of Health on the safety of the vaccines. Some of these states, especially Kano State, commissioned an independent committee of experts to investigate and carry out tests on the vaccines sent to Kano for use in the vaccination exercise.
The federal government, on its part through its health ministry, ordered the National Programme on Immunization, NPI, to send samples of the polio vaccines to NAFDAC, national Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development, NIPRD, Peak Medical Laboratory, National Hospital, Abuja and more advanced laboratories in South Africa. An ABUTH pathologist, Dr Abdulmumini Rafindadi, who is also a respected WHO consultant, was also asked to conduct an independent analysis of the polio vaccines.
As the national campaign for polio inoculation draw near (it kicked off on 3rd October, 2003 nationwide), all the stakeholders gathered in Abuja at the NPI conference room on 27th November, 2003 to hear the outcome of all the tests ordered by the Federal Ministry of Health. Three of the results showed presence or traces of the anti-fertility hormone, oestrodoil, in the samples tested. There were results from National Hospital, Abuja, Peak Laboratory and the much advanced test from South Africa.
Dr A. Rafindadi of ABU Zaria said he found nothing in his test and that the vaccines were safe. Kano could not present its report because its committee was still working on the polio vaccine.
After discussions, debates and analysis of the results by the 26 participants at the meeting and two observers from the National Assembly under the chairmanship of a former WHO consultant Professor Emeritus Umaru Shehu, the experts concluded that "there is incontestable evidence demonstrating that OPV is safe and that allegations to the contrary, while disturbing, are untenable."
They described the level of presence of the anti-fertility substances found in the test as "insignificant and therefore recommended to the government to continue or allow polio vaccination on the NID."
The decision or recommendation of the experts was however questioned by antagonists of the polio vaccination. They argued that if the level of contamination was insignificant, what brought anti-fertility hormone into a poliomyelitis vaccine. The secrecy and the desperation with which NPI wanted to continue with the vaccination, they argued, smacked of a hidden agenda.
The Jama'atul Nasril Islam was contacted by government to intervene as most of the complaints and apprehensions were from predominantly Muslim areas of the North, JNI therefore organized a team of scientists in October 2003 to travel to India and conduct an extensive and analytical investigation of the controversial polio vaccines. After spending 23 days in laboratories in India, the lead scientist Dr Haruna Kaita returned with a result that still proved contamination of the vaccine with, not only the anti-fertility substance but even toxic and cancer-causing agents.
Kano government team that investigated the vaccines also released their result before the House Committee on Health that the polio vaccines tested in Kano were indeed contaminated with the estrogen hormone. Dr Alhassan Bichi, a pharmaceutical scientist with school of medicine, BUK who led the investigations, told the House Committee that estrodoil was not part of the items listed on the label of the vaccines, a fact which he said was against international standard on drug manufacturing and marketing.
NAFDAC was later to receive its test result from India which also showed the traces of estradoil hormone. Though described as "insignificant" its presence has however added to the confirmation that the polio vaccines were indeed contaminated.
The JNI to and Kano results compelled the Federal Ministry of health to form an all-inclusive team of experts comprising federal government experts, JNI scientists, Kano scientists, traditional rulers and other stakeholders to travel out to South Africa, and India, and conduct a final verification test on the polio vaccines. According to the travel plans for the team, they were to leave Nigeria on the February 8, 2004, spend a day in Johannesburg, South Africa additional 4 days in Jakarta, Indonesia and two days in India where the test was to take place.
This latest effort to allay fears of the public on the OPV is already generating a controversy of its own. A newspaper report credited to the Kano lead scientist Dr Alhassan Bichi that their South African and Indian test showed contamination has been denied categorically by him. Said he, "I did not sign any statement to that effect and I am not the chairman of the committee as reported in that story. The statement was concocted and I intend to take the matter up on Monday when we meet with the rest of the team in Abuja."
An Islamic organization, National Islamic Center, in a paid advertorial also expressed its reservations on the manner the South Africa, India and Indonesian mission of the FG/JNI team. "First, there was no scientist opposed to the oral polio vaccine in the team. Only emirs and a few technically incompetent people were selected to represent Jama'atul Nasir Islam. Secondly, the South African laboratory was pre-selected by government while only one day was allowed for the tests in both India and South Africa when it is evident that such tests take up to 9 days to be performed," it stated.
The organization also questioned what samples were actually taken to South Africa and India for testing because while the team is saying that JNI samples were taken along, their scientist, Dr Haruna Kaita says no one took his samples to South Africa and India. It also argued that the JNI batches tested positive to a dozen contaminants but the FG/JNI team tested for only two.
Information filtering from the members of the team indicated that there was quarrelling and fighting among the members especially between the scientists and traditional rulers who were interfering in the work of the scientist. There was also incidence of conflict between federal government's representatives and other stakeholders over what samples to be tested. While the government experts wanted only the newly supplied batches of polio vaccines from NPI to be tested, other stakeholders insist those brought from Kano and NAFDAC should be tested because they are the ones in contention.
A new dimension has however been introduced to the polio vaccination controversy as those opposed to the use of the contaminated OPV are asking for compensation to the innocent children that were given the anti-fertility laced OPV. They are also calling for prosecution of those responsible for the importation of the contaminated vaccines into the country.
The Supreme Council for Sharia implementation in Nigeria, the body that first made the apprehensions of the people public, is at the forefront in the latest campaign for compensation. Its secretary-general, Mallam Nafiu Baba Ahmed said in the face of growing evidence that the vaccines used for the OPV inoculation in the last four years in Nigeria were contaminated with anti-fertility substances, it behoves the government to support a bill for a law to provide compensation for people who have been dropped, especially those in the rural areas, who were deceived into submitting their children to be administered with the contaminated polio vaccine.
The Jamatul Nasril Islam scientist who conducted tests on the OPV in India, Dr Haruna Kaita is also of the opinion that the importation and administration of contaminated vaccines to Nigerian children was criminal and should be treated like every other fake drug cases handled by NAFDAC.
"What does NAFDAC do to fake drugs, they burn them and prosecute those who imported them into the country. So this has even strengthened our resolve that those who imported this fake drug in the name of polio vaccine must be prosecuted like any other criminals apprehended by NAFDAC. Because they imported into Nigeria fake drugs in the guise of polio vaccine. The vaccines don't have NAFDAC batch number and they are contaminated with toxic substances," the pharmaceutical scientist argued.
Kano State governor Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau who had to withstand various campaigns of calumny over his decision to suspend the exercise until evidences of safety of the vaccines are confirmed, told a gathering of editors in Kano last week that he was ready to allow the vaccination in his state but on condition that scientifically proven evidences are presented to disprove the results of the test earlier conducted on the vaccines by a team of medical experts he commissioned.
He said his government prefers "the evil of waiting for answers from the federal government and in the process getting some few more children infected with the polio virus, than the evil of continuing with the vaccination which I am convinced was contaminated and will be given to millions of unsuspecting children, and in the next 20 years, you will have no more children in your community. So we decided, the first was a lesser evil."
A new defence put up by the federal government experts on the polio vaccine led by Prof. Emeritus Shehu and other WHO experts was that the Estradoil hormone found in the vaccines were not significant enough to cause any reproduction hazards to those for whom it was administered. He even went the extraordinary mile to teach the young JNI scientist, Dr Haruna Kaita, on the other uses of estrogen in the human body.
But Dr Kaita would not agree, said he, "some of the things we discovered in the vaccine are harmful toxic, some have direct effect on human reproductive system. So I was surprised when one of the federal government's doctors was saying something contrary to what I have known, learnt, taught and is a common knowledge to all pharmaceutical scientists, that estrogen cannot induce anti-fertility response in humans. That is the most absurd thing I ever heard from a learned person, who said he is a professor," Kaitra added.
A BBC report last month on the outcome of a well-researched survey on the effect of estrodiol on women of child-bearing age in Glassgow, Scotland further heightened the fears of antagonists on the estradoil-laced polio vaccines administered on the Nigerian child.
According to the report, following the growing number of infertility among younger women in Glasgow, an investigation of the phenomenon was ordered. It was discovered that their source of drinking water was contaminated with the estrodoil hormones which was being discharged in large quantity by young girls using contraceptives.
The federal governments approach to the controversy so far has been of tactful caution though many see its refusal to publish and make public various test results conducted under the auspices of the NPI as a sign of collaboration with proponents of the oral polio vaccines, who incidentally are government officials benefiting directly from the exercise and their international sponsors WHO, UNICEF, VSAID etc. But the transparency shown so far by the Minister of Health, Prof. Lambo to allow all stakeholders join in the search for truth on people's apprehensions on the vaccines is commendable.
There are questions that are however yet to be tackled squarely, which border on the issues raised by both Mallam Nafiu Baba Ahmed of Supreme Council for Sharia and Dr Haruna Kaita the JNI scientist. This include, what is the fate of the children who have been administered with the estrodoil-laced vaccines for four years since the programme began in 2000? Has the contaminated stock of the vaccines been exhausted as claimed by NPI, and who verified that? Has NAFDAC tested the new batches and certified them safe and uncontaminated? Why insistence on NPI ordered vaccines, why not allow every state to bear such responsibility? Would those responsible for the importation of the anti-fertility laced polio vaccines be brought to book for endangering the lives of innocent children?
Here in Nigeria, there are already calls for a survey of our women of child bearing age who were administered with the polio vaccines to determine the extent and effect of the estradoil which is confirmed in the polio vaccines. Notable among those advocating for such survey are Dr Yusuf Bala Usman and an elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai.
Also in a statement recently, a non-governmental organization, Network for Justice said it will embark on a longitudinal study of the reproductive lives of children administered with the suspected estradoil-laced polio vaccines. While calling for that the statement signed by its national chairman Sa'ad Isah Radda, also advised that the issue should be handled professionally, multi-dimensionally and intellectually rather than the current approach of seeking answers to the problem via cheap black mail.
It has been variously stated by Governor Ibrahim Shekarau of Kano State, Justice Abdul-Kadir Orire of Jama'atul Nasril Islam, the supreme council on Sharia and even the Sultan himself, Alhaji Muhammadu Maccido that the present clamour for verification of the vaccine was not borne out of malice for the west, or religious bigotry nor rejection of vaccinations of any kind. The objections were a genuine desire to safeguard the interest and well-being of their people, which should be paramount to any genuine and serious leader who has the well-being of his people at heart.
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