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Nigerian State Maintains Skepticism over WHO Agenda on Polio Vaccine Drive

KANO, Nigeria, March 22, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The northern Nigerian state of Kano has opted out of the WHO oral polio immunization drive -- officials there remain skeptical of the safety of the vaccine.

The World Health Organization maintains that its oral polio vaccine is safe, despite a report by Nigerian pharmaceutical scientist Dr. Haruna Kaita, who found evidence that contaminants in the vaccine he tested in labs in India would "have direct effects on the human reproductive system."

A BBC report today said that the refusal by the majority Muslim state is a result of the Islamic leadership's claim that the vaccination program is a western plot to render Muslim women infertile.

Kano State Governor Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau told the BBC's Hausa service program in Kaduna that "We have investigated and discovered that there is danger in the polio vaccines. We have therefore opted out of the national immunization exercise against polio, until we are convinced of its efficacy and safety because [a] series of laboratory tests have revealed that the vaccines contain some substances which are capable of causing infertility, especially in females," he said, as reported in allAfrica's ThisDay on-line news source.

State health officials have said they would join the campaign to vaccinate Nigeria's youth when they have assurance of an uncontaminated vaccine, or when their own vaccines which they have ordered from Asia arrive.

During a visit to Canada this month by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Canada announced another $13 million in funding earmarked for the UN's Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The fund brings the total allocation for the GPEI from Canada to $123 million since 1999.

Read the March 11 LifeSiteNews.com coverage "UNICEF Nigerian Polio Vaccine Contaminated with Sterilizing Agents Scientist Finds" at:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/mar/04031101.html

See the LifeSiteNews.com Special Report that reveals substantial evidence that UNICEF has become a very willing partner in the population control anti-child and anti-family programs of the U.N.: http://www.lifesite.net/waronfamily/unicef/index.html

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