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| Polio Immunization Drive Set for Africa | |
| 2004-02-21 | |
| 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 doesn’t seem hard to me but I’m jes’ 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 world’s 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? Monday’s 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 Africa’s 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." I’m 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 Nigeria’s Muslims by spreading the AIDS virus or agents that cause sterility. "It’s a Zionist plot! We’re perfectly capable of killing our children without dem infidels gettin’ 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 mission’s findings in advance. "We’ll 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.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #4 Hey, hop into your time-travel phonebooth and visit Backward, barbaric, brutal, peverse, twisted... sheesh, how did that go, again? So many applicable negative adjectives screaming for attention, my head swims... |
| Posted by: .com 2004-2-21 3:34:50 PM |
| #3 Ignorance is the greater violater of human rights in the history of mankind. And, unfortunately, for these people they were born into a religion led by the most abusive, ignorant idiots ever to don a piece of cloth. |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2004-2-21 8:55:23 AM |
| #2 Is it possible cost wise to use the oral vaccine? It sure seems like it would be easier. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-2-21 8:00:08 AM |
| #1 Oh man. Everybody get in line, take a number. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-2-21 1:37:21 AM |