SCI/TECH: WHO: World Polio Cases Rise Dramatically, page 1

A polio vaccine boycott in Nigeria has caused the global incidence of polio to rise by one half. Most of those cases were in Africa, with most of those cases being in Nigeria. Muslim clerics called for the boycott telling Muslims that the polio vaccine was part of a US plot to make Nigerian Muslims infertile or to give them AIDS.

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The number of worldwide polio cases last year rose dramatically after a vaccine boycott in Nigeria spawned a resurgence of the disease across Africa, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

The number of cases worldwide in 2004 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. 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.

The boycott triggered an outbreak across the continent, infecting children in formerly polio-free countries and hurting WHO-led attempts to eradicate the crippling disease by Dec. 31, 2005.

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This has to be one of the most tragic consequences of ignorance I have heard of since the baby raping epidemic in South Africa. There had been an effort to try and eradicate polio before the end of this year, but now that effort has been set back considerably and the effort faces a one-hundred-million dollar shortfall caused by the Nigerian outbreak. Can there be any hope for Africa at any cost when one considers the resistance of her leaders, both religious and secular, to the lessons of science?

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