Africa charity push to combat child polio

Twenty million children targeted in west Africa mass polio vaccination.

A massive push to wipe out Polio across west Africa started yesterday with hopes to vaccinate 20 million children. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers will be mobilised to help give out the oral vaccine.

Polio, which can cause lifelong paralysis, can be prevented with a vaccine that costs less than 50p. It has been wiped out in Europe and north America. But the virus is still rife in West Africa and children are most vulnerable. As well as many general medical facilities (including vaccination for polio in Nigeria and Indonesia) SOS Children has a specialist polio centre in the Freetown SOS Children's Village, which has been providing specialized care and education for children handicapped by polio since 1988 with the aim of integrating them into society despite their handicaps. Most of them spend only a limited time with SOS, returning to their families who are usually not able to care for them for material reasons.

Today (Friday) and tomorrow, The United Nations Children's Fund is working with the health ministries in eight African countries to try to rid Africa of the contagious and incurable virus.

Stakes are perhaps, highest in Nigeria, which is the only country where children still suffer from all three types of polio. Authorities say efforts to immunize every child in the past failed because health officials weren't able to reach each child. They say that effort is better coordinated this time.

But religious leader’s suspicions about the vaccine were behind a major set-back in 2003. According to a report yesterday by the BBC, a 2003 vaccination programme in northern Nigeria had to be abandoned after rumours spread that the polio vaccine caused Aids and was part of a western plot to sterilise Muslim girls. As a result the virus then spread and re-infected 23 countries which had earlier been declared polio free.

Ghana had recorded no new cases of polio for five years until just a few months ago when eight cases were identified - the children between the ages and one and four were all paralysed.

Polio spreads easily in west Africa, especially densely populated countries with poor sanitation. It is transmitted through contaminated food, drinking water, faeces and swimming pool water.

The virus invades the nervous system, and can cause paralysis in hours. Sometimes, it can be fatal. Survivors often have wasted limbs, and find it hard to get a job. One in 200 infections leads to paralysis and among those, between five and 10% die because the paralysis hits breathing, according to figures from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

The ongoing effort to eradicate polio is not cheap - in Ghana alone $2.5m (£1.7m) will be spent over the next three days. But an analysis in The Lancet medical journal found that eliminating the virus would be cheaper than containing it, because even small drops in vaccination levels could lead to large outbreaks.