18 February 2009
editorial
Many Nigerians were aghast to hear of the Federal Government's plan to secure a 50 million dollar World Bank loan to fight polio.
This, coming soon after American billionaire Bill Gates' 75 million dollar donation to fight the same child-hood disease, smirks of a misplacement of priorities. Is funding the main problem facing the fight against polio in Nigeria? It can't be. Right now there is enough funding coming in from the US government, from the United Kingdom, the European Union and other donor agencies for the specific aim of polio eradication.
Government officials were quick to say that the loan was interest-free so there is no danger in taking it. After our hard-won liberation from the London and Paris Club of creditors, it is only natural for Nigerians to be wary of international debt, regardless of the soft conditions. In any case, a project that is so severally- funded by international donors can not justify any kind of loan. What the campaign against polio in Nigeria desperately needs, is a measure to encourage full acceptance by the Nigerian populace.
Until a few years ago, when allegations of contaminants in the vaccines led to a heated national controversy on the safety or even desirability of the vaccination, Nigerians have never shown aversion to immunization programmes. Indeed killer-diseases like whooping cough and small pox were all eradicated from the country through those mass immunization programmes of three to four decades ago. With well-planned media campaigns that included cinema shows in schools and village squares, people were mobilized to come forward and have themselves immunized against the diseases, with great results.
Most people over the age of thirty bear the marks of those routine immunizations which were held regularly to fight those childhood killer diseases. Today, according to World Health Organisation statistics, Nigeria is among the four countries in the world which are yet to eradicate the polio virus and the only one with the three different strands of the disease all in existence here. In his interview with Daily Trust, Bill Gates claimed that polio has already been eradicated in the South, it is in the North that the disease still exists. If all the three claims above are true, for international statistics are sometimes misleading, then government must re-strategise to eradicate polio in the North.
As noted above, decades ago immunization exercises were successful because the people in the North subscribed to them without question, something had to have gone wrong for them to develop this recent apathy. In the last two decades, a vigorous family planning campaign was embarked upon by both government agencies and non-governmental organizations. The campaign was obviously targeted at the North, whose polygamous practices and extended family structures favour large families. They also frown on any attempt to impose birth control because it is against certain tenets of Islamic religion, which most Northerners profess.
The fact that a renewed emphasis on immunization, which came complete with fanfare, came high on the heels of this aggressive birth control drive must have provided fertile grounds for conspiracy theorists to say that the vaccines were being used to sterilize infants. This will, of course, make the task of population control easier for the advanced countries which wish to impose it on us. These conspiracy theorists won the day, thanks mainly to the fact certain contaminated vaccines were indeed found and confirmed to be so by some Nigerian scientists.
Daily Trust believes that the way to fight this apathy to polio immunization, is to first of all address these fears. A vigorous media campaign through jingles, drama and talk shows should seek to dispel any notion that polio vaccines can make children sterile. Special care should be taken to store the vaccines properly, as this will prevent premature expiration of batches, a fact which might have caused the contaminants detected in 2003.
Additionally, any complaints of adverse reaction, after the vaccine, should be taken seriously and investigated, as failure to do so can give rise to speculations that the vaccines are harmful. This, rather than the haste to take a 50 million dollar World Bank loan, is what will ensure a speedy eradication of polio in Nigeria.
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