Sixty-nine children in Nigeria have been partially paralysed after weakened viruses from polio vaccines were inadvertently transmitted to people in unvaccinated regions in the north of the country.
Festus Adu, director of the WHO’s polio laboratory in Ibadan, Nigeria, told SciDev.Net that this polio outbreak is only appearing in areas where people are refusing to be vaccinated or where there is not enough oral polio vaccine.
“The best way to overcome the outbreak of vaccine-related polio virus is to increase immunisation coverage, making sure that all children get the vaccine,” said Adu, whose lab analyses polio samples before sending them for further tests at the Centers for Disease Control in the United States.
