Wiping out polio.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The herculean struggle to eliminate polio worldwide stands at a crossroads, its success endangered by a politically motivated misinformation campaign in the African nation of Nigeria.

As recently as 1988, polio claimed hundreds of thousands of victims annually in more than a hundred nations. Since then, a massive immunization campaign - a partnership of the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF - has nearly wiped out the disease. In 2003, fewer than 800 people worldwide contracted polio.

Recently, however, outbreaks have occurred in eight African countries that had previously eradicated the disease. The infection is believed to be spreading from Nigeria, the only country in the world that has resisted cooperating with the vaccination campaigns that are essential to the U.N. program's success.

The problem is focused on northern Nigeria, where Islamic clerics are warning parents not to immunize children. Americans, these partisans of polio claim, are seeking to suppress population growth in developing countries and have contaminated the vaccines with chemicals that will leave young girls sterile or infected with HIV.

It's all nonsense, of course - and politically motivated nonsense at that. Yet two of Nigeria's 37 states are now refusing to cooperate in an immunization campaign last month that sought to vaccinate 60 million African children.

Because polio is a disease that can quickly spread from even small holdout populations, the provincial boycott is endangering the success of the U.N. campaign. Nigerian leaders must make certain that the immunization campaign gets back on track as soon as possible.

Until recent developments in Nigeria, the fight against polio has been an international success story, one that enjoyed full cooperation by every nation. U.S. and other world leaders should pressure Nigerian officials to take whatever steps are necessary to get the immunization program back on track.

World Muslim leaders are doing their part, working with Nigerian health officials to counter the local clerics' allegations. The Organization of the Islamic Conference has approved a resolution supporting the vaccinations, and a prominent Egyptian cleric has even issued a fatwa directing Muslims to participate in the program. Islamic health experts in other nations have offered to inspect vaccination batches before they're used in Nigeria.

The protest by Nigerian clerics is aimed at stirring up public sentiment against the federal government, as well as against Western culture. It's a cynical ploy that, if allowed to succeed, will cripple hundreds of thousands of children across Africa and elsewhere.