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Polio Immunization Drive Set for Africa
The World Health Organization will launch a massive immunization campaign Monday targeting 63 million children in 10 African countries as a polio outbreak spreads from heavily Muslim northern Nigeria.My vaccination plan: 1. Buy vaccine. 2. Buy refrigeration equipment. 3. Lease airplanes to haul vaccine to Africa. 4. Train nurses and health workers to give vaccine. 5. Round up tykes. 6. Shoot any mullah who interferes in any way. 7. Give vaccine. That doesnât seem hard to me but Iâm jesâ a simple country doctor. Islamic leaders in the heart of the Nigerian outbreak say they will uphold their ban on the polio vaccine, calling it part of a U.S. plot to spread infertility or AIDS among Muslims. Okay, okay, move point #6 to point #1. Health workers say the 5-month-old ban has spread the crippling disease back into seven African countries where it had been eradicated, and threatens a 16-year effort - the worldâs single-largest public health project - to eliminate the disease worldwide. Wonder if I could file a complaint with the International Criminal Court to charge the asshat mullahs with complicit homicide? Mondayâs campaign launch will send hundreds of thousands of volunteers house to house to administer the oral vaccine, from arid Niger on the edge of the Sahara to the savannas of central Africaâs Congo. "Africa has had a tremendous success story" in eliminating polio, WHO spokeswoman Melissa Corkum said in Geneva. "It would be a shame if we let that slip." Iâm happy to help, Melissa. See my plan. The global eradication campaign has reduced its range to six nations, including Nigeria, Niger and Egypt in Africa. Fewer than 800 cases were reported last year worldwide. U.N. workers blame a third of cases on the vaccine ban in northern Nigeria. Targeted countries for the immunization campaign include Nigeria, where the northern state of Kano is one of the largest remaining reservoirs of the polio virus in Africa. Islamic leaders in Kano and two other northern states say the international polio campaign is a U.S. plot to kill Nigeriaâs Muslims by spreading the AIDS virus or agents that cause sterility. "Itâs a Zionist plot! Weâre perfectly capable of killing our children without dem infidels gettinâ in the way!" Kano state officials claim their own lab tests have found Notice that the Muslim leaders were a separate bunch from the team of scientists. Influential northern Islamic leaders have rejected the missionâs findings in advance. "Weâll not accept whatever result they bring back because the federal government is not sincere," Nasiu Baba Ahmed, secretary-general of the Supreme Council for the Implementation of Sharia in Nigeria, told The Associated Press. "And who knows sincerity better than us?" "They went and hired some traditional rulers as members of the team. Are those traditional rulers scientists? How could they determine whether or not the vaccine is contaminated when they have no knowledge of science?" Ahmed asked. "That is why we cannot accept whatever result they bring back from that that trip." Ahmed, see point #6 above. Man, this upsets me.
Posted by: Steve White 2004-02-21 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=26653 |