African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic THE ... - Blackherbals.com

African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic 

Volume 4, Issue 4 NEWSLETTER May 2009 

THE MENINGITIS AND POLIO BELT 

Nigeria: Meningitis Again What is the African Traditional 

Herbal Research Clinic? 

Editorial 

We can make you healthy and wise 

24 February 2009 

It is now obvious that the scourge of Meningitis has 

become an annual epidemic in Nigeria. 

The figures from the many states where the disease has 

manifested, point to a picture of death and pain. Almost 

a hundred people are said to have died of the disease, 

with the highest death toll of 54 persons coming from 

Maiduguri, Borno state. Other high death tolls include 

Kano, 21 people and Gombe, 14. In all, about 2000 cases 

have been recorded in Gombe, Kano, Borno, Yobe, 

Jigawa and Kaduna states. 

What is more disturbing about the Meningitis outbreak, 

this year, is the fact that it has spread outside the areas 

traditionally known as the 'Meningitis Belt' to include 

areas where the disease did not use to manifest. 

According to health experts this current scourge has led 

to cases in Akwa Ibom, Ebonyi, and Cross River states. 

Even before its threat to become a national disease, the 

re-current outbreak of Meningitis in the North should 

have been a huge cause for concern to our federal health 

authorities. 

Nakato Lewis 

Blackherbals at the Source of the Nile, UG Ltd. 

The African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic located 

in Bukoto, Uganda is a modern clinic facility created to 

establish a model space whereby indigenous herbal 

practitioners and healers can upgrade and update their 

skills through training and certification and respond to 

common diseases using African healing methods and 

traditions in a modern clinical environment. 

Traditional healers are the major health labor resource 

in Africa as a whole. In Uganda, indigenous traditional 

healers are the only source of health services for the 

majority of the population. An estimated 80% of the 

population receives its health education and health care 

from practitioners of traditional medicine. They are 

knowledgeable of the culture, the local languages and 

local traditions. Our purpose is to raise public 

awareness and understanding on the value of African 

traditional herbal medicine and other healing practices 

in today’s world. 

I NSIDE T HIS I SSUE 

Continued on page 2 

1 Nigeria: Meningitis Again 

2 Nigeria: WHO – Serious Outbreak of Meningitis Hits Country 

3 Afrikan Spirituality-Yoruba Spirituality and Philosophy 

4 Feature – Vaccines: Fear of Meningitis Hits Edmonton 

6 Feature – Bacterial Meningitis: Deadly, Preventable Disease 

8 Feature – Hiding Polio Quotes 

10 Similarity of Polio to Pellgra, Beriberi and Deficiency Diseases 

16 Feature – Diet Major Factor in Polio Prevention 

18 Uganda: Meningitis Contained 

19 Burkina Faso: Meningitis Epidemics in Vaccinated Areas 

21 Chad: W135 Meningitis Shows up After Nearly a Decade 

22 Feature – Chronic Fatigue Syndrome -The New Polio 

30 Nigeria: Pfizer to Pay N11.2 Billion Compensation 

33 Uganda: Mass Immunisation Returns as Polio Attacks Again 

34 Kenya: Millions of Children Targeted in Stop-Polio Campaign 

35 Tanzania: Polio at Arusha’s Doorstep 

38 Nigeria: 50 Million Dollar Loan for Polio? 

40 Feature – Vaccine Induced Polio, Ugandan Kids Die By 1000s 

48 Herb of the Month – Momordica Charantia (Cerasee) con’t. 

The Clinic is open and operational. Some of the 

services we offer are African herbal medicine, 

reflexology, acupressure, hot and cold hydrotherapy, 

body massage, herbal tonics, patient counseling, blood 

pressure checks, urine testing (sugar), and nutritional 

profiles. We believe in spirit, mind, and body. Spiritual 

counseling upon request. 

Visit us also at www.Blackherbals.com 

Hours: 9:00 am to 6:00 pm Monday thru Friday 

Saturday - Sundays – Closed 

1--Traditional African Clinic – May 2009

Continued from Page 1 – Nigeria: Meningitis Again 

The government ought to be preparing for it annually, 

since it is an illness whose causes and season of outbreak 

are well-known. An emphasis on prevention through a 

well-coordinated enlightenment campaign could have 

saved many of those currently groaning in pain over the 

neck-stiffing scourge. The current efforts of the National 

Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to contain the 

epidemic in the North-East would have made greater 

impact if it had come earlier, by way of a preventive 

campaign. 

Governors of states within the traditional Meningitis zone 

should have come together since the initial outbreak in 

November, last year and synergized towards a combined 

effort to fight its spread. To this end, they could have 

embarked on immediate immunization exercises in all 

communities prone to the outbreak. Apart from giving the 

all-important advice on sleeping in an airy environment 

and stopping overcrowding in rooms, a special clean up 

campaign should have been embarked upon by these 

states. Sanitation exercises in order to rid our dirty streets 

of their never-ending rubbish heaps and fetid gutters 

should have been a priority of the states' health and 

environment ministries. 

As an air and water- borne disease, Meningitis will 

certainly find a fertile breeding ground in dirt, a factor 

which is not in short supply all over the country. With our 

inability to stop it before it struck, we are left with no 

option but to try and contain the scourge before it spreads 

too far. Towards containment, the federal government 

must make the vaccines available for general 

immunization so that both communities where the disease 

has manifested and where it has not will be immunized 

against it. 

Already in Kano state, where 278 cases were recorded in 

28 out of its 44 local governments, the critical problem 

facing health workers is shortage of necessary vaccines 

from the federal ministry of health. The Minister of 

Health should note this and send the needed supplies with 

dispatch. More and more health workers should be 

trained to diagnose the various type of Meningitis and 

know the appropriate treatment for each. Correct 

diagnosis can lesson the pain of the disease on patients 

and hopefully also limit fatalities. 

In the meantime, there is the urgent need to start a 

massive media campaign to enlighten people on ways to 

guard against contracting the disease. Radio and 

television jingles should urge people to avoid 

overcrowding, practice personal hygiene, boil water 

before drinking and be familiar with the earliest 

symptoms of Meningitis. They should be told to immediately 

seek medical attention when these symptoms 

are noticed. In babies and little children where the 

symptoms may resemble other childhood diseases, mothers 

should be told to take any serious symptom on their infants 

to the hospital. 

While hoping that all hands will be on deck to deal with the 

current Meningitis epidemic, Daily Trust advises both 

federal and state governments to, in future, take necessary 

measures to prevent another outbreak of the disease rather 

than run helter-skelter trying to treat an epidemic. 

http://allafrica.com/stories/200902240404.html 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Nigeria: WHO - Serious 

Outbreak of Meningitis Hits 

Country 

THISDAY 

30 March 2009 

Lagos — World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that a 

"serious" outbreak of meningitis has hit the northern part of 

Nigeria. 

A statement issued by WHO, a copy of which was made 

available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on 

Saturday said that, "some 17,500 cases had been registered 

and 960 people had already died of the disease". 

The statement said that although the states most affected 

were Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara States, 

"the epidemic has also hit other states in northern part of 

the country hard." 

It also stated that vaccination campaigns were underway, 

with the support of UNICEF and other NGOs . 

According to the statement, the UN health agency is 

supporting the Nigerian Health Ministry's efforts to boost 

disease surveillance, with technical experts on ground since 

last month. 

Aong with its partners, the statement said WHO had 

released 2.3 million doses of vaccines to Nigeria. It, 

however, noted that, "nearly 13 million doses were 

stockpiled for 2009, but more are needed for this meningitis 

season which will run from January through June". 

Meanwhile, WHO has also reported an outbreak of the 

disease in Niger Republic with 4,513 cases and 169 deaths. 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 


AFRIKAN SPIRITUALITY 

Yoruba Spirituality and Philosophy 

There are various religious systems in Africa that share many 

commonalties. To discuss them all in their intricacies would 

take volumes. This page will attempt to focus on the Yoruba 

spiritual philosophy of West Africa. It stresses an extremely 

ancient rooted African tradition of working with natural 

forces and the ancestral realm to better one's life. Its system 

of divination in fact has led some scholars to remark on its 

similarity to Eastern philosophical beliefs such as those found 

among the Chinese in the I Ching. And while it may not be as 

ancient as Nilotic beliefs, it is the African spiritual system 

that can be best called a world religion. 

Map showing strong centers of Yoruba belief 

The origins of Yoruba religion lie at Ille-Ife', a holy city that 

is regarded as the cradle of civilization for the Yoruba of 

Southwestern Nigeria. Currently there are 20 million or more 

people who speak Yoruba as their mother tongue. Yorubaspeaking 

communities have lived in other West African 

countries for centuries. When speaking of a "Yoruba spiritual 

system," we are discussing traditional beliefs of those who 

speak the language and not the more modern religions some 

may practice today (Christianity, Islam, etc.) Over the years 

the Yoruban spiritual system has taken on the characteristics 

of a world religion. With the trans Atlantic Slave Trade, the 

Yoruba religion was transplanted in various parts of the 

western hemisphere. Today it is practiced in a host of 

different forms. One of these is Vodoun, a mixture of Yoruba, 

Catholicism, and Freemasonry, in Haiti. It is known 

throughout South America, the Caribbean, and Central 

America as Santeria where it is practiced not only by 

Africans but also the descendants of indigenous peoples 

(misnomered Indians or Hispanic) that inhabit the region. 

Worship in the Yoruba religion is based upon the belief in a 

Supreme Being (Oldumare), the creator of Heaven (Orun) 

and Earth (Aye); the belief in a multitude of spiritual deities 

(Orisha); and the belief in ancestral spirits (Egungun). 

The Yoruban spiritual system has been described as a 

pyramid with five layers. At the apex is Oldumare, the 

Supreme Being. The second layer beneath the Supreme 

___________________________________ 

Managing Editor: Nakato Lewis 

PUBLISHER: KIWANUKA LEWIS 

Published monthly and freely by BHSN for the ATHR Clinic 

The traditional shrine as a symbol of our cultural history 

Being is composed of lesser deities called Orisha. Below 

these deities are ancestral deities called Egungun. While 

all of the above are noted as spiritual beings, the next two 

layers of the pyramid consist of human beings. Firstly 

there are the kings, queens, chiefs, priests and priestesses 

while at the last layer are devotees. 

The Yoruba universe has a "heaven" and an "earth" which 

differs from the Western view. The Yoruba divide the 

physical world into two planes, the upper Outerworld 

(Orun) and the world of the living (Aye). This universe is 

often pictured as sphere. Orun is the home of Oldumare, 

Creator and Supreme Being. It is also home to the Orisha 

and the ancestral spirits, Egungun. The heavenly plane 

(Orun) has two dimensions: simply put, a good heaven 

and a bad heaven. Earthly deeds and character decide 

which heaven one travels to when one dies. In traditional 

Yoruban belief there is no "hell" nor is there a "devil" in 

the western sense. It was not until 1850AD, with the 

influence of Christianity and Islam, that a "devil" was 

assigned to the Yoruba spiritual system. 

The Yoruba believe in the existence of spiritual beings or 

divinities. Called Orishas, they are seen as emissaries of 

Oldumare from whom they emanated. These Orisha are 

ancestors whose great deeds earned them divinity. The 

Orisha are said to recognize themselves and are 

recognized through a host of different numbers and colors. 

These polarities which each Orisha exhibits are expressed 

as personalities called Roads or Paths of the Orisha. This 

is done through offerings to Orisha of their particular 

favorite foods and other gifts. One can learn much about 

these different Orishas by watching the forces of nature at 

work about you. These Orishas can be contacted during a 

"bembe" where one or more of their priests will be 

mounted in a form of highly spiritualized trance 

possession. This possession by an Orisha is an integral 

part of Yoruba religious ritual as it serves as a means of 

communicating with the forces of Oldumare (God). 

The Babaloawo, Diviner, holds a sacred place in Yoruba 

spirituality. It is the Babaloawo who calls upon Ifa, the 

oracle of divination who mediates between the Orishas, 





FEATURED ARTICLES 

VACCINES: MENINGITIS 

FEAR OF MENINGITIS HITS EDMONTON 

VRAN Newsletter – Fall, 1999 

By Edda West 

Following the deaths of two teens and another 22 

confirmed cases of invasive meningococcal disease 

(IMD) in the Edmonton area in recent months, health 

officials launched a massive vaccine campaign aimed at 

70,000 teens between the ages of 15-19. As the 

campaign got under way, a heightened fear of the 

disease took hold, and the public demanded an 

expansion of the meningitis campaign to include all 

children from the age of 2 onward. One concerned 

parent who called VRAN to inquire about vaccine side 

effects said that numerous adverse reactions to the 

vaccine like nausea and vomiting had also been 

reported. Edmonton health officials identified the 

reported cases as group C of neisseria meningitis. 

Meningococcal disease is primarily relegated to the late 

winter months and often seems to hit teen populations. 

Health Canada’s web site indicates that 200-300 cases 

of meningococcal disease occur each year. Mortality 

can range from 5% to 15% of cases. 

Meningitis is the term used to describe infections of the 

central nervous system and “can be caused by almost 

any infectious agent, including bacteria, mycobacteria, 

fungi, spirochetes, protozoa, helminths, and viruses. 

Certain symptoms and signs are common to all types of 

central nervous system infection: headache, fever, 

sensorial disturbances, neck and back stiffness, positive 

Kernig and Brudzinski signs, and cerebrospinal fluid 

abnormalities. Central nervous system infection 

constitutes a medical emergency.” (1) 

A few years ago, Kitchener/Waterloo area was host to 

the neisseria meningitidis pathogen, which claimed the 

lives of several young people. One teenage girl 

developed meningitis and died a week after getting the 

vaccine which health officials explained away as not 

enough time to develop immunity, which takes about 

10-14 days. Pathogens commonly linked to meningitis 

are haemophilus Influenza B, pneumococcal organisms, 

and the numerous sub groups of neisseria meningitidis. 

Menomune, produced by Aventis Pasteur (previously 

known as Connaught), is the quadrivalent vaccine used in 

Canada during outbreaks to ‘protect’ from 4 groups of 

neisseria mengitis – A,C, Y & W135. Product 

information indicates that 20% of reported cases of 

meningococcal disease occurs in infants and about one 

quarter of resulting deaths are in infants. Thimerosal, a 

mercury derivative is added to the vaccine as a 

preservative. How long ‘protection’ lasts is not indicated 

in the product information sheet. 

A frightening possibility is that the vaccine might 

actually fuel the outbreak of serogroups not covered. 

Smith Kline’s statement about its meningitis vaccine 

Mencevax reflects this concern. “The use of Mencevax 

ACWY may increase the meningococcal carriage rates, 

especially for meningococcal groups not included in the 

vaccine.” 

The most commonly occurring groups that appear in 

Canada are C and B. However, the vaccine does not 

‘protect’ from sub-group B. The age distribution of group 

B and group C varies greatly. Infants with meningococcal 

disease were significantly more likely to be infected with 

group B disease than group C, and children below the age 

of one year have the greatest age specific incidence of the 

disease. The graph posted below is from Health Canada’s 

web site and indicates the percentage of reported cases 

according to serogroups, in 1995 and 1996. Clearly, 

group B is quite dominant as it comprises 48% and 46% 

respectively in these years. (2) Undoubtedly, this is why 

health officials are often seemingly reluctant to do 

sweeping vaccination campaigns because group B 

meningitis antigen is not included in the vaccine. And 

they know that statistically nearly half the cases that are 

likely to occur may be ‘unprotectable’ by the vaccine. 



Continued from page 4 – Fear of Meningitis Hits 

Edmonton 

In addition, there is a growing awareness in the 

research community that use of the vaccine may 

actually precipitate the switching of group C to group 

B. In a letter to the editor of the New England Journal 

of Medicine, January 20, 2000, German researchers 

had this to say. “In view of the fact that an outbreak of 

meningococcal disease follows transmission of the 

meningococcus within only a few days, our report 

illustrates the extraordinary speed with which 

meningococci switch capsular serogroups. In the case 

we describe, the serogroup changed as a result of the 

transfer of serogroup-specific genes during the short 

period of transmission of the disease isolate. The 

rapidity of the serogroup switching arouses concern 

about the induction of herd immunity against single 

serogroups by vaccination programs in which capsular 

antigens (e.g., serogroup C polysaccharides) are used. 

Without lowering the incidence of meningococcal 

disease in the long run, such programs may rapidly 

increase the incidence of serogroup B meningococcal 

disease, for which no vaccine is available.” (13) 

Another abstract from the Journal of Infectious 

Diseases (June, 1998) emphasized a similar concern. 

“The appearance of serogroup B:ET15 was related 

temporally and geographically to mass immunization 

campaigns designed to control serogroup C 

meningococcal disease in Canada. Since there is no 

vaccine available to control serogroup B 

meningococcal disease, the appearance of this variant 

may have public-health significance if it demonstrates 

the same epidemic potential as its serogroup C 

counterpart.” (14) 

Nature has provided strong and effective protection to 

babies from meningitis through breastfeeding. 

Researchers at Howard University College of 

Medicine in Washington DC found that breast-milk 

samples studied contained “significant titres of specific 

IgG and IgA to four organisms; Bordetella pertussis, 

Haemophilus influenzae type B, Streptococcus 

pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis……, and that 

the antibody levels to the four organisms were higher 

in breast-milk than in both maternal and infant 

sera……. the significant concentrations of specific IgG 

and IgA antibodies in milk samples may indicate a 

protective role for breast-milk against the four 

infections in early childhood”. (3) 

In the U.S. where college students are urged to get the 

meningitis vaccine, it is estimated that college students 

are at increased risk of developing meningitis. Some 

observers are linking their susceptibility to meningitis 

to stress, overcrowded dormitories, cigarette smoke, 

alcohol consumption, late nights, inadequate sleep and 

poor nutrition. (4) Although Canadian high school students 

don’t live dormitory life styles, they are also subjected to 

high stress levels just by virtue of the fact that teen years 

are a very difficult time of life. Coupled with peer 

pressures, school pressures, and nutritional status that is 

ften suboptimal – all are contributing factors to lowered 

immunity and lowered resistance to disease. 

Dr. Cheraskin’s research in the mid 1970’s demonstrated 

that refined sugar lowers the white blood cell count 

dramatically. He sampled people’s blood before and after 

sugar intake, and found that eating a few teaspoons of 

sugar lowers the white blood cell count up to 50% or more, 

within an hour, and that it takes 5-6 hours for blood 

chemistry to normalize. Sugar can drastically impair white 

blood cell activity, sending the immune system into a 

tailspin. Teens need real health education that teaches them 

nutritional ways to protect their immune systems. And they 

need to understand the role of junk foods, fast foods, 

highly sugared foods and drinks in lowering their bodies’ 

resistance to pathogens. (12) 

Canadian health officials have in recent years targeted teen 

populations with diphtheria/tetanus & polio vaccine ‘catchup’ 

campaigns. Consider this. “When we know that 

vaccine antigens are nearly all a neurocerebral tropism* 

the question that arises when a child presents with 

meningitis is: Has the child had a vaccination of some 

sort? In nature dangerous meningococci do not wander 

about haphazardly. Vaccinations predispose to more 

aggressive bacterial strains, which will soon have nothing 

to fear from all our antibiotics.” (*Turning of (part of) 

particular organism in a particular direction in response to 

(5, 13) 

external provocation.) 

The provocation effect caused by vaccines in precipitating 

meningitis is well documented. The Urabe strain of mumps 

vaccine has been linked to meningitis, as was an outbreak 

of asceptic meningitis in Brazil that started in August, 

1997, 3 weeks after the highly publicized “national 

vaccination day” when an intensive mass vaccination 

campaign against MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) was 

launched. In a survey of 87 children hospitalized in one 

area of the country (ages 1-11), it was determined that 86 

% had been vaccinated with MMR. According to a Reuters 

news report, on March 3, “The researchers "conservatively 

estimated" that the risk of aseptic meningitis is about 1 in 

14,000 MMR vaccine doses.” (6) 

5--Traditional African Clinic – May 2009 

Commenting on asceptic viral meningitis, Dr. Viera 

Scheibner Ph.D. recounts a brief history of the redefinition 

of polio. “When the first injectable polio vaccine was 

trialed on 1.8 million of American children in 1954, within 

9 days there was a huge outbreak of paralytic polio in the 

Continued on page 11




Bacterial Meningitis: A Deadly but Preventable Disease 

Victoria Porter 

www.Medscape.com 

Introduction 

On January 26, 2004, my 19-year-old son awoke with 

what I thought was a stomach virus. He had been 

treated for a stomach virus just 2 months earlier, so I 

felt comfortable taking care of him at home since we 

still had medicine available. His nausea and fever were 

controlled with Phenergan and Motrin, and he was able 

to tolerate liquids. By that afternoon, he experienced 

some abdominal cramping and diarrhea, which I 

contributed to the virus. . . . Soon after [I had checked 

on] him, my son walked into our living room and sat 

down. His face was covered with bruises, and his 

extremities were blue. I immediately called 911 and 

waited for help to arrive. My son was conscious on our 

arrival to the ER at the hospital where I work. Within 

minutes, he was in full arrest. The ER doctor told me he 

suspected meningococcal meningitis, and that there 

had already been several cases in our area in the last 

month. I had no idea, since I had never come in contact 

with this deadly disease. My son died within 1 hour of 

serious symptoms presenting. Imagine my shock only 2 

days later to learn that there is a vaccine available. I 

have talked with many people, including doctors and 

nurses, who were not aware that a vaccine existed. 

[Amy Necaise, RN, personal communication, May 30, 

2004.] 

* * * 

Saturday, September 11 started the same as any other. 

At around 9 AM, I was on the phone when [my son] 

Aaron said his shoulder hurt and he had a headache. 

He climbed into bed. . . . His temperature began to rise 

and he vomited. . . . His temperature had risen to 103˚ 

F. . . . At the hospital, I told the admitting nurse each 

symptom and said I was worried that it was meningitis. 

. . . We went in to see the doctor. Again, I said 

meningitis. He did a general examination. He ordered 

blood tests and a chest x-ray, for pneumonia. . . . When 

the results came back, he gave me a bottle of Motrin, 

told us it was a virus and to come back in 3 days. . . . 

As the evening wore on, I again started to worry. He 

was still vomiting occasionally but was able to drink 

water. The fear started to set in when he had a bowel 

movement and didn't seem to notice. Then I noticed a 

bruise on his neck -- not a pinprick rash, a bruise. . . . 

That was it, we woke up our other son and went to the 

local ER. . . . All I had to do was move the sheet and 

show the bruise on his neck. We were rushed through 

immediately. I laid Aaron gently on the bed, keeping 

hold of his hand. That was the last time I saw him alive. 

. . . I truly believe that Aaron died not just from 

meningitis but also from ignorance. We have to get the 

message out. This is real, it is killing and maiming our 

children. I thought I was protected because I knew the 

symptoms. That only helps if the doctors know them, 

too. [1] 

These scenarios -- heartbreakingly similar to hundreds 

of thousands of other meningitis cases with fatal 

outcomes -- are devastating. Adding to the tragedy is the 

fact that these deaths could have been avoided -- either 

through vaccination or by accurate diagnosis and rapid 

intervention. With almost 8000 cases and 2000 deaths 

occurring annually in the United States, bacterial 

meningitis represents a significant source of morbidity 

and mortality.[2] 

According to a World Health Organization estimate, 

about 171,000 people worldwide die from bacterial 

meningitis each year. Even with antimicrobial treatment, 

fatality rates are as high as 5% to 10% in the developed 

world. The incidence and mortality rates are much 

higher in third-world countries. Between 10% and 20% 

of those who do survive bacterial meningitis suffer 

permanent damage such as mental retardation, deafness, 

or epilepsy.[3] 

And yet, many people -- patients and healthcare workers 

alike -- are only vaguely aware of the signs and 

symptoms of this deadly disease. As the nurses reporting 

the above cases emphasized, awareness and recognition 

of this lethal disease must improve, and the healthcare 

industry must step up its prevention efforts by getting 

the word out about vaccination. Continued on page 7 


Continued from page 6 – – Bacterial Meningitis 

Recognizing the Disease 

Meningitis is a viral or bacterial infection of the 

meninges (membranes that surround the brain and spinal 

cord) that enters through the bloodstream from other parts 

of the body. The meninges have no host defenses to fight 

off invading bacteria. Meningeal inflammation of the 

brain or spinal cord can also be of noninfectious origin. 

One of the most important things to determine when 

meningitis is suspected is whether it is bacterial 

(meningococcal) or viral. If a bacterial pathogen is the 

culprit, it is essential to identify the specific causative 

agent so that the appropriate antibiotics can be prescribed 

immediately. If left untreated, bacterial meningitis can 

lead to severe complications such as brain damage, 

hearing loss, epilepsy, and even death. Viral meningitis is 

generally less severe and typically resolves on its own. 

The classic presentations of meningitis are fever, 

headache, meningismus (nuchal rigidity), and signs of 

cerebral dysfunction such as confusion, delirium, or 

impaired consciousness. However, in the vast majority of 

cases, only 1 or 2 of these symptoms will be present, so 

the diagnosis is not always so clear-cut. Only two thirds 

of patients with bacterial meningitis will present with all 

3 classic symptoms of fever, nuchal rigidity, and change 

in mental status. [4] However, the diagnosis of meningitis 

can be ruled out, with 99% to 100% sensitivity, by the 

absence of at least one of the classic symptoms of fever, 

neck stiffness, and altered mental status. 

Additional presenting symptoms include nausea, 

confusion, sleepiness, stupor, visual discomfort, and 

seizure activity. All of the above-mentioned 

characteristics are harder to detect in infants -- signs to 

look for in the very young include lethargy, irritability, 

vomiting, and poor appetite. Symptoms may have a 

sudden onset, whereby the patient becomes severely ill 

within a matter of hours, or they may develop more 

gradually (over the course of 1 to 2 days). [5] 

Methods of Diagnosis 

Early diagnosis of meningitis -- especially the bacterial 

form -- is crucial. Because the symptoms of meningitis 

can closely mimic the flu or other viral illnesses, many 

clinicians miss the diagnosis and prescribe inappropriate 

treatments. In many cases, a missed diagnosis can have 

fatal consequences. All healthcare workers should be 

aware that early recognition of the symptoms can be a 

matter of life and death, and they should become familiar 

with all possible signs and symptoms. A careful and 

thorough diagnosis must be undertaken. 

The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) must be examined for 

general appearance, consistency, and tendency to clot. 

CSF analysis should include cell counts (including a 

WBC differential), glucose and protein analysis, and 

Gram staining of the centrifuged sediment. The use of C- 

reactive protein levels has been shown to play an 

important role in differentiating among the various types 

of meningitis. Polymerase chain reaction has a high 

sensitivity for viral meningitis and is also used to detect 

bacterial meningitis. [6] 

The hands, ears, nose, throat, and sinuses should be 

checked for the possible source of infection, and a latex 

agglutination test to detect bacterial antigens of 

Streptococcus pneumoniae, Neisseria meningitidis, 

Haemophilus influenzae type b, group B streptococcus, 

and Escherichia coli strains can aid in the diagnosis of 

bacterial meningitis. However, this test may lack 

sensitivity unless ultrasonic enhancement is used. [6] 

Patients with suspected bacterial meningitis should also 

undergo testing for serum electrolytes and blood urea 

nitrogen, which indicate the degree of dehydration and 

identify hyponatremia and hypoglycemia -- common 

symptoms of meningitis. 

Clinical clues signaling the presence of bacterial 

meningitis may include sinusitis, otitis, mastoiditis, 

infective endocarditis, and characteristic skin 

manifestations (such as those seen in infections caused by 

herpes simplex virus, varicella-zoster virus, Rickettsia 

species, Treponema pallidum, Borrelia burgdorferi, and 

Sporothrix schenckii). [5] Cardiovascular instability or 

focal neurologic signs such as pupillary changes, 

hemiparesis, and ocular palsies are indicative of bacterial 

meningitis. Pulmonary infection, otitis media, 

mastoiditis, head trauma, alcoholism, splenectomy, sickle 

cell disease, and immunosuppression are also known risk 

factors for bacterial meningitis. [2] Petechial and purpuric 

rashes usually indicate meningococcemia or H influenzae 

meningitis. Arthritis suggests the presence of H 

influenzae or N meningitidis, and head trauma or a 

chronically draining ear usually signals pneumococcal 

meningitis. [6] 

Bacterial meningitis can be difficult to distinguish from 

other infectious diseases. To aid in the differential 

diagnosis, physicians should take a complete 

epidemiologic history and ask questions about contact 

with sick persons; sexual behavior; dietary habits; illicit 

drug use; medication history; exposure to insects, 

rodents, or arthropods; and recent travel history. [5] 

For example, a warning bell should go off if a patient 

with suspected meningeal infection reports having 

recently traveled to Africa or Asia. In the past 30 years, 

these continents have experienced major epidemics of 

meningitis, with much higher incidences than those seen 


-7- Traditional African Clinic May 2009




Hiding Polio Quotes 

www.whale.to/vaccine/polio1.html 

[Polio now hides behind these names: Viral or aseptic 

meningitis, Guillaine Barre Syndrome (GBS), Chinese 

Paralytic syndrome, CHRONIC FATIGUE SYN- 

DROME, epidemic cholera, cholera morbus, spinal 

meningitis, spinal apoplexy, inhibitory palsy, 

intermittent fever, famine fever, worm fever, bilious 

remittent fever, ergotism, ME, post-polio syndrome, 

acute flaccid paralysis Synonyms for GBS] 

See: flaccid paralysis Chinese Paralytic syndrome 

"Polio has not been eradicated by vaccination, it is 

lurking behind a redefinition and new diagnostic names 

like viral or aseptic meningitis.......According to one of 

the 1997 issues of the MMWR, there are some 30,000 

to 50,000 cases of viral meningitis per year in the 

United States alone. That's where all those 30,000 - 

50,000 cases of polio disappeared after the introduction 

of mass vaccination"---Viera Scheibner 

"Today, various other forms of the the word "polio" are 

still used to describe the effects of poisoning, though 

usually with regard to paralysis in animals. A search of 

Medline ("polio" and "poison") finds about 45 

contemporary articles where poisoning causality is 

attributed to polio. The terminology found was: 

"polioencephalomalacia", "poliomyelomalacia", "poly 

radiculoneuritis", "neurological picture similar to that 

of poliomyelitis", "polioencephalomyelomalacia", 

"lumbal poliomyelomalacia", "cerebrocortical necrosis 

(polioencephalomalacia)", "Lead poisoning in greyheaded 

fruit bats (Pteropus poliocephalus)", "multi- 

focal poliomyelomalacia", "spinal poliomalacia", "Polio 

and high-sulfate diets", "Atypical porcine enterovirus 

encephalomyelitis: possible interraction between 

enteroviruses and arsenicals", "Polioencephalomalacia 

and photosensitization associated with Kochia scoparia 

consumption in range cattle", "bovine polioencephalomalacia". 

---Jim West, Health and Research 

Publications, http://www.geocities.com/harpub/ 

"The United States Public Health Bureau is extremely 

reticent about reporting diseases caused by vaccination 

but the report from 1922 to 1931 admitted that there had 

been 85 cases of post-vaccinal encephalitis, which 

DeKruif states "is the twin of infantile paralysis.""-- 

Eleanor McBean 

"Paralytic cases were not distinguished from nonparalytic 

cases until a recommendation was made by the 

Dominion Council of Health in 1949- The LCDC figures 

provided from 1952 and onward represent this 

administrative change: recording only those cases 

adhering to the requirements for a diagnosis of paralytic 

poliomyelitis. In a report released in June of 1959, 



Continued from page 8 – Hiding Polio Quotes 

another administrative change was recommended by 

the Dominion Council of Health, further altering the 

way in which apparent cases of poliomyelitis would be 

reported. All non-paralytic cases of poliomyelitis were 

to be henceforth recorded as "meningitis, viral or 

aseptic," a disease which itself only became reportable 

in 1952." These two administrative changes effectively 

reduced the apparent incidence of poliomyelitis. In 

particular, since the latter change is temporally 

correlative to the introduction of the polio vaccines, 

the vaccines appear to have been responsible for a 

reduction in poliomyelitis cases when it is entirely 

possible that the administrative changes are primarily 

responsible."--Catherine Diodati MA (Immunization 

History, Ethics, Law and Health p116) 

Statistics on polio were manipulated. One such way 

was to redefine the disease, renaming it "viral or 

aseptic meningitis" or "cocksackie virus". In one US 

county, for example, in July 1955 there were 273 cases 

of polio reported for 50 cases of asceptic meningitis, 

compared to 5 cases of polio in 1966 and 256 cases of 

aseptic meningitis. These new diagnostic guideline's 

were issued by the CDC. If you object to polio 

vaccination, and you get polio--it is usually called 

"polio." If you have been vaccinated and you get 

"polio", it is called meningitis. 

Beddow Bayly, author of the book “The Case Against 

Vaccination” said: “After vaccination was introduced, 

cases of aseptic meningitis were more often reported 

as a separate disease from polio, but such cases were 

counted as polio before the vaccine was introduced. 

The Ministry of Health admitted that the vaccine status 

of the individual is a guiding factor in diagnosis. If a 

person who is vaccinated contracts the disease, the 

disease is simply recorded under a different name.” 

Coxsackievirus and echoviruses can cause paralytic 

syndromes that are clinically indistinguishable from 

paralytic poliomyelitis. (John H. Menkes, Textbook Of 

Child Neurology, 5th ed., page 420) 

http://www3.bcity.com/harpub/ 

The definition of 'epidemic' was changed from 20 

cases/1000,000 to 35 cases/100,000. Pre-vaccination, 

cocksackie virus and aseptic meningitis were classified 

as polio; post-vaccination they were classified 

separately. In addition, non-paralytic polio cases were 

now reported as viral or aseptic meningitis. 

"Ralf R. Scobey, M.D., president of the Poliomyelitis 

Research Institute. Inc. Syracuse, New York (in the 

Archives of Pediatrics, Sept. 1950) lists 170 diseases 

of polio-like symptoms and effects but with different 

names such as: epidemic cholera, cholera morbus, spinal 

meningitis, spinal apoplexy, inhibitory palsy, intermittent 

fever, famine fever, worm fever, bilious remittent fever, 

ergotism, etc. There are also such common nutritional 

deficiency diseases as beriberi, scurvy, Asiatic plague, 

pellagra, prison edema, acidosis etc."--E. McBean 

"Dr. Thomas Francis did not mention in his key 

evaluation of the 1954 Salk field trials that those who 

contracted polio after their first innoculation and before 

their second inoculation were placed in the "notinoculated" 

list.' (Maurice B. Bayly, The Story Of The 

Salk Anti-poliomyelitis Vaccine, 1956). 

Dr. Buchwald responds that prior to the introduction of 

polio vaccinations in Germany, anyone was counted as 

having polio, even if they only had the virus in their 

feces. It is known, he goes on, that there are people who 

are healthy but who evacuate polio viruses when they go 

to the bathroom. Based on this criteria, the number of 

cases was approximately 4,000 per year. After the 

introduction of the vaccine, statistics included only those 

polio cases of people who were paralyzed for at least six 

weeks.--Testimony of Dr Buchwald MD 

A former public health officer, Dr Ratner, reported that 

just before the introduction of the first polio vaccine the 

National Foundation For Infant Paralysis was paying 

physicians $25 for each reported diagnosis. "A patient 

would walk into a doctors office with a limp from an 

accident. He'd say he had a fever a few days ago...and 

guess what the diagnosis would be?" It was well known 

Paralytic polio cured itself 50% of the time within 60 

days. After the Salk vaccine was introduced, the 

definition of polio was changed by the CDC. Now, in 

order to have paralytic polio, you had to have it longer 

than 60 days. 

Because the Salk vaccine was promoted as being 

incapable of causing polio, cases that occurred following 

administration of the vaccine were denied, and excluded 

from the Vaccine injury table. 

Dr. Bernard Greenberg, a biostatistics expert, was 

chairman of the Committee on Evaluation and Standards 

of the American Public Health Association during the 

1950s. He testified at a panel discussion that was used as 

evidence for the congressional hearings on polio vaccine 

in 1962. During these hearings he elaborated on the 

problems associated with polio statistics and disputed 

claims for the vaccine's effectiveness. He attributed the 

dramatic decline in polio cases to a change in reporting 

practices by physicians. Less cases were identified as 

polio after the vaccination for very specific reasons. 

"Prior to 1954 any physician who reported paralytic 



Continued from page 9 – Hiding Polio Quotes 

poliomyelitis was doing his patient a service by way of 

subsidizing the cost of hospitalization and was being 

community-minded in reporting a communicable 

disease. 

The criterion of diagnosis at that time in most health 

departments followed the World Health Organization 

definition: "Spinal paralytic poliomyelitis: signs and 

symptoms of nonparalytic poliomyelitis with the 

addition of partial or complete paralysis of one or more 

muscle groups, detected on two examinations at least 

24 hours apart." Note that "two examinations at least 

24 hours apart" was all that was required. Laboratory 

confirmation and presence of residual paralysis was 

not required. 

In 1955 the criteria were changed to conform more 

closely to the definition used in the 1954 field trials: 

residual paralysis was determined 10 to 20 days after 

onset of illness and again 50 to 70 days after onset.... 

This change in definition meant that in 1955 we started 

reporting a new disease, namely, paralytic 

poliomyelitis with a longer-lasting paralysis. 

Furthermore, diagnostic procedures have continued to 

be refined. Coxsackie virus infections and aseptic 

meningitis have been distinguished from paralytic 

poliomyelitis. Prior to 1954 large numbers of these 

cases undoubtedly were mislabeled as paralytic 

poliomyelitis. Thus, simply by changes in diagnostic 

criteria, the number of paralytic cases was 

predetermined to decrease in 1955-1957, whether or 

not any vaccine was used. 

Health officials convinced the Chinese to rename the 

bulk of their polio to Guillaine Barre Syndrome 

(GBS). A study found that the new disorder (Chinese 

Paralytic syndrome) and the GBS was really polio. 

After mass vaccination in 1971, reports of polio went 

down but GBS increased about 10 fold.......In the 

WHO polio vaccine eradication in the Americas, there 

were 930 cases of paralytic disease—all called polio. 

Five years later, at the end of the campaign, roughly 

2000 cases of paralytic disease occurred—but only 6 

of them were called polio (41). The rate of paralytic 

disease doubled, but the disease definition changed so 

drastically that hardly any of it was called polio any 

more."—Greg Beattie 

"They started vaccinating in 1985 (in the Americas). 

Within 4 months they had 350 cases…They caused a 

substantial, huge outbreak of polio but they started 

‘discarding’ most of the cases (put as flaccid 

paralysis)."—Viera Scheibner, Ph.D. 

http://www.whale.to/vaccine/polio1.html 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

-10- Traditional African Clinic April 2009 

SIMILARITY OF POLIO TO 

PELLAGRA, BERIBERI AND 

OTHER DEFICIENCY 

DISEASES 

Eleanor McBean 

Ralf R. Scobey, M.D., president of the Poliomyelitis 

Research Institute. Inc. Syracuse, New York (in the 

Archives of Pediatrics, Sept. 1950) lists 170 diseases of 

polio-like symptoms and effects but with different names 

such as: epidemic cholera, cholera morbus, spinal 

meningitis, spinal apoplexy, inhibitory palsy, intermittent 

fever, famine fever, worm fever, bilious remittent fever, 

ergotism, etc. There are also such common nutritional 

deficiency diseases as beriberi, scurvy, Asiatic plague, 

pellagra, prison edema, acidosis etc. No drugs, medicines 

or medical treatments have ever been able to cure any of 

these diseases and no germs have been isolated as the 

cause. But they all respond to fasting, cleansing, proper 

diet and improved circulation. The similarity of these 

diseases to polio is too obvious to go unnoticed. They are, 

in reality, all one disease with varying stages of intensity 

and different names. It is ridiculous to assume that polio 

is caused by a virus and the rest of them are caused by 

nutritional deficiency. Dr. Scobey senses this fact when 

he states: "Inasmuch as nerve cells react in much the 

same way to various poisons, further research will 

probably show that in these cases polio micro-organisms 

are not always present, but intoxication (poisoning) may 

be produced through faulty metabolism or by the 

absorption of poisons from without." 

http://www.whale.to/vaccine/polio2.html 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Nigeria Meningitis Death Toll 

Surpasses 2,000 

Outbreak more serious than initially feared, nation’s 

health officials say 

Reuters 

May 6, 2009 

ABUJA, Nigeria - A meningitis outbreak in Nigeria is 

more serious than initially feared with the death toll 

rising more than sixfold over the past two months, the 

Health Ministry said on Wednesday. 

Deaths from the epidemic have risen to 2,148 since the 

first case was recorded in December from 333 announced 

by the health minister in early March. The number of 

reported cases has climbed more than eightfold to 47,902 

over the same period. Continued on page 18

Continued from page 5– Fear of Meningitis Hits Edmonton 

just vaccinated and some of their parents and other 

contacts. The U.S. Surgeon General discontinued this 

trail for 2 weeks. The vaccinators put their heads together 

and came back with a new definition of poliomyelitis. 

The classical definition of polio: a disease with residual 

disease with the residual paralysis which persists for 

more than 60 days. This nifty administrative move 

“eradicated” some 99% of cases of polio. When a 

vaccinated child gets paralysis which resolves within 60 

days changed into a polio, it will be diagnosed as viral or 

aseptic meningitis. According to one of the 1997 issues of 

the MMWR, there are between 30,000 to 50,000 cases of 

viral meningitis in the U.S. each year. That’s where all 

those cases of polio now are: hidden under a new name.” 

(7) 

An article in Lifeforce magazine (summer/99) presented 

an overview of a meningitis outbreak in Niger, Africa in 

1997: Dr Marc Vercoutere having studied the official 

figures had this to say. "You will note the appreciable and 

constant increase in the epidemic, particularly at the end 

of March, when the vaccination campaign had virtually 

ended and protection was supposed to be effective after 8 

days. Despite massive vaccination which, in principle, 

should have given protection for about 3 years, we 

counted, in March 1996 after a new epidemic, 341 deaths 

in 2945 cases. On 8 October 1997, after yet another 

epidemic (within the supposed period of vaccine 

protection), they announced 504 deaths from 4925 cases." 

Dr Vercoutere noted a slight increase in the deaths-tocases 

ratio, which would suggest increasing resistance to 

the antibiotic treatment, in addition to the inefficacy of 

the vaccinations. A review of the 1996 epidemic in 

Nigeria, which killed 8000, provided similar results.” (5, 

13) 

And then there is the fluoride question. Edmonton 

drinking water has been fluoridated for many years. 

Fluoride suppresses the thyroid gland, which in itself 

leads to a huge assortment of health problems. In Europe 

fluorides were used for many years as effective antithyroid 

agents, even at doses below the level deemed 

"optimal" for water fluoridation. Its use was abandoned 

due to its high toxicity and accumulative nature. Product 

information for current anti-thyroid agents state that 

when patients are on anti-thyroid drugs vaccinations 

should not be administered because anti-thyroids may 

lower the body's resistance and chances are high that one 

might get the infection the immunization is meant to 

prevent. (9) 

Fluoride manipulates and interferes with a myriad of 

biochemical functions. It acts as an adjuvant, intensifying 

the activity of pathogenic organisms. Department of 

Microbiology, University of Iowa, showed how fluoride 

proved to be a most potent adjuvant when given 

intragastrically to rats. The authors warned that the 

supplemental fluoride prescribed for infants and especially 

that which is inadvertently ingested by children and adults 

given fluoride gels, is within the concentration range of that 

which produced the effects observed in rats in their studies, 

concluding that the fluoride adjuvant effect described 

should have relevance for fluoride therapy worldwide. (8) In 

other words, fluoride increases the risk of susceptibility to 

infectious organisms. 

Other studies have documented the fact that fluorides 

enhanced mating activity of certain organisms which cause 

meningitis and that mating activity was dependent on body 

temperature. The lower the body temperature the higher the 

mating activity. Again, low body temperature is a sure-tell 

sign of an underfunctioning thyroid gland. (10) Maharajan et 

al (1978) investigated 20 patients suffering from 

meningococcal meningitis and other acute febrile illnesses 

and found that in all patients thyroid function was 

significantly low. (11) 

References: 

1. Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment, edited by Lawrence 

M. Tierney Jr, S.J. McPhee & Maxine A. Papadakis – 34th 

edition, 1995. 

2. Health Canada website: 

http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdrrmtc/00vol26/dr2621e.html 

English 

http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdrrmtc/00vol26/rm2621f.html 

French 

3. Ann..Trop Paediatrics 1989;4:226-232 (also quoted in Hilary 

Butler’s position paper on The Role of Vaccines In SIDS at 

the Sixth SIDS International Conference, Auckland 

University, New Zealand, Feb. 11/2000) 

4. The Unknown Killer: What is Meningitis & Who is at Risk – 

from ABCNEWS.com 

5. Vaccination Information (UK) & Lifeforce magazine 

6. Reuters Health Report(Mar 3/00) – quotes from Am J 

Epidemiology 2000;151:524-530. Forwarded to VRAN by 

Raymond Gallup 

7. Viera Scheibener – Statement to U.S. House of 

Representatives – Hearings on safety of hepatitis B vaccine. 

8. Butler et al [Butler JE; Satam M; Ekstrand J - "Fluoride: an 

adjuvant for mucosal and systemic immunity." Immunol 

Lett26(3):217-20 (1990) Department of Microbiology, 

University of Iowa. 

9. With many thanks to Andreas Schuld – Parents of Fluoride 

Poisoned Children, for providing fluoride related resources 

for this article. 

10. (->hypothyroidism.) (Dong et al, 1998) [Dong H, 

Courchesne W - "A novel quantitative mating assay for the 

fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans provides insight 

into signalling pathways responding to nutrients and 

temperature." Microbiology144 ( Pt 6):1691-7 (1998)] 


-11- Traditional African Clinic April 2009

Continued from page 11 – Fear of Meningitis Hits Edmonton 

11. [Maharajan G, Etta KM, Singh A, Ahuja IS, Ahuja GK - 

"Thyroxine, triiodothyronine and thyrotrophin levels in 

meningococcal meningitis, typhoid fever and other febrile 

conditions." Clin Endocrinol (Oxf) 9(5):401-6(1978) 

12. W.M. Ringsdorf, JR., D.M.D., M.S., E. Cheraskin, M.D., 

D.M.D., and R.R. Ramsay, JR., D.M.D., "Sucrose, 

Neutrophilic Phagocytosis and Resistance to Disease," 

Dental Survey 52 no. 12 (December 1976): 46-48. 

13. The New England Journal of Medicine -- January 20, 

2000 -- Vol. 342, No. 3 . 

14. Journal of Infectious Diseases, 1998 Jun;177(6):1754-7 

(PUBMED abstract) 

Further References: 

(PUBMED abstract) 

J Infect Dis 1998 Jun;177(6):1754-7 

Serogroup B, electrophoretic type 15 Neisseria 

meningitidis in Canada. 

Kertesz DA, Coulthart MB, Ryan JA, Johnson WM, 

Ashton FE 

Bureau of Infectious Diseases, Laboratory Centre for 

Disease Control, Health Canada, Ottawa. 

Invasive meningococcal disease is nationally reportable 

in Canada. In recent years, a serogroup C genotype, 

designated electrophoretic type 15 (ET15), has been the 

most frequently isolated meningococcal genotype in 

Canada and has caused epidemics across the country. 

Between August 1993 and September 1995, there were 9 

cases of invasive meningococcal disease caused by a 

variant of this genotype, expressing group B capsular 

polysaccharide. The appearance of serogroup B:ET15 

was related temporally and geographically to mass 

immunization campaigns designed to control serogroup C 

meningococcal disease in Canada. Since there is no 

vaccine available to control serogroup B meningococcal 

disease, the appearance of this variant may have publichealth 

significance if it demonstrates the same epidemic 

potential as its serogroup C counterpart. 

http://www.vran.org/vaccines/meningitis/men-edmonton.htm 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Continued from page 7 - Bacterial Meningitis 

in Europe and the United States. [7] Sub-Saharan Africa, 

which is plagued by the highest meningitis disease 

burden, is referred to as the "meningitis belt." [3] 

How Is Meningitis Transmitted? 

Meningococcal disease was first described as early as 

1805, when an outbreak spread through Geneva, 

Switzerland. (However, a probable description of a 

meningococcal epidemic was given by Willis in 1661.) 

But it wasn't until 1887 that a causative agent of 

meningococcal meningitis was identified. [7] The germs 

that cause bacterial meningitis are very common and live 

naturally in the back of the nose and throat. At any given 

time, 10% of the population are carriers of the disease but 

never actually become ill. [6] In fact, most cases of 

meningitis are acquired through exposure to asymptomatic 

carriers. [3] 

Meningitis can be spread via nose and throat secretions (eg, 

coughing, sneezing, and kissing); however, meningitis is 

not considered to be a highly contagious disease; casual 

contact or breathing in the air where a person with 

meningitis has been normally would not expose someone to 

meningitis because the causative organisms cannot live 

outside the body for very long. 

Acute meningitis usually develops from an invasion of 

bacterial and/or viral pathogens from mucosal surfaces in 

the nasopharynx, sinus cavities, and middle ear space into 

the bloodstream. It can also result from head injuries, 

penetrating wounds, or neurologic surgeries. [6] Subacute 

meningitis and chronic meningitis, which evolve more 

slowly than acute meningitis, are more commonly caused 

by fungi, parasites, disseminated malignancy, tuberculosis, 

AIDS, sarcoidosis, Lyme disease, or syphilis. [6] Certain 

medications, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs 

and antimicrobial agents, can cause aseptic meningitis. [2] 

In infants, most cases of meningitis are caused by group B 

streptococcus and Gram-negative enteric bacilli (eg, E 

coli). Mother-to-infant transmission and aspiration of 

intestinal and genital tract secretions during labor and 

delivery are common modes of transmission. [6] After 

infancy, S pneumoniae is the leading bacterial cause of 

meningitis. 

N meningitidis is another common offending pathogen 

causing bacterial meningitis. H influenzae type b 

meningitis, once the most prevalent form of meningitis in 

children, is now more rare in the developed world because 

of successful immunization practices (H influenzae type b 

conjugate vaccine) in the past 2 decades. [6] In fact, 

incorporation of this vaccine into the routine immunization 

schedule resulted in a 94% decline in the number of US 

cases of meningitis caused by H influenzae. [5] Table 1 

shows the common pathogens causing meningitis, by age 

group. 

People living in unsanitary and/or crowded conditions and 

those with immunocompromised status are at particularly 

high risk for meningitis. Incidence is at a peak in the winter 

and early spring. [6] In 1995, the median age of US patients 

with bacterial meningitis was 25 years. This signified a 

dramatic shift: about a decade earlier, the median age was 

15 months. [5] 


Antibiotic Interventions 

It cannot be overemphasized that treatment must be started 

early in the course of the disease if it is of bacterial 


Continued from page 12 – Bacterial Meningitis 

etiology. Prompt intervention can reduce the risk of 

death to below 15% (the risk reduction is not as 

high among the elderly). [5] If not treated as a medical 

emergency, bacterial meningitis can lead to seizures, 

coma, increased intracranial pressure, nerve damage, 

stroke, and even death. 

Table 1. Pathogenic Causes of Meningitis by Age 

Group 

• Neonates 

o Group B Streptococcus spp (49%) 

o Escherichia coli (18%) 

o Listeria monocytogenes (7%) 

o Non-group B Streptococcus spp 

• Children and infants 

o Haemophilus influenzae (40% to 60%) 

o Neisseria meningitidis (25% to 40%) 

o Streptococcus pneumoniae (10% to 

20%) 

• Adults 

o S pneumoniae (30% to 50%) 

o N meningitidis (10% to 35%) 

o Staphylococcus spp (5% to 15%) 

o H influenzae (1% to 3%) 

o Gram-negative bacilli (1% to 10%) 

o Streptococcus spp (5%) 

o L monocytogenes (5%) 

Adapted from Incesu L and Khosla A. Meningitis, bacterial. 

eMedicine. [2] 

By identifying the causative agent, the appropriate 

antibiotic can be administered. A patient's age, 

comorbidities, and the status of his or her immune 

system can aid in this identification. For example, 

immuno-compromised patients are at particular risk for 

infection with S pneumoniae, N meningitidis, Listeria 

monocytogenes, and aerobic Gram-negative bacilli. S 

pneumoniae affects all age groups whereas Streptococcus 

agalactiae affects the very young, L 

monocytogenes affects both the very young and the 

very old, and N meningitidis is rarely seen in infants or 

in persons over the age of 60 years. [4] 

Antibiotic intervention only improves the patient's 

prognosis if the antimicrobial therapy is administered 

before the patient's clinical condition has deteriorated. 

If antibiotics are started when the patient is already in 

an advanced stage of the disease, the patient's chance 

for survival is poor. [2] 

Administration of antibiotics can also protect against 

the development of the disease among persons who 

have been exposed to a meningitis patient. According 

to a group of investigators from the Communicable Disease 

Surveillance Centre in Gloucester, United Kingdom, and 

from other centers in Austria, Germany, and Wales, giving 

the appropriate antibiotics to household contacts of a 

patient with meningococcal disease can reduce their risk of 

infection by 89%. [8] 

The use of corticosteroids as an adjunct to antibiotic 

therapy has been shown to render treatment of bacterial 

meningitis more effective, especially in children, by 

reducing CSF inflammation and hearing loss. However, 

most of the data pertaining to corticosteroid treatment relate 

specifically to pediatric meningitis caused by H influenzae, 

and further study is needed to determine whether these 

positive findings can be extrapolated to adults and to 

children with meningitis caused by other pathogens. [5] 

Prevention: Where Do We Stand With Vaccination 

Efforts? 

Vaccination is the only known way to protect against 

meningitis. Meningococcal group C conjugate vaccine, H 

influenzae type B conjugate vaccine, and pneumococcal 

conjugate vaccines are the 3 types of vaccination available 

against meningitis. All 3 are necessary in order to provide 

full protection, as each one is only effective against a 

particular pathogen. Unfortunately, there is no single 

vaccine available that can prevent all forms of meningitis. 

The vaccine with the most far-reaching benefit is 

Menomune (Aventis Pasteur), the meningococcal 

polysaccharide vaccine, which protects against all but 1 of 

the 5 main serogroups of meningococcal meningitis (A, B, 

C, Y, and W135), with an estimated efficacy rate of 85% to 

90% in older children and adults and has been shown to be 

useful in controlling epidemics. It is approved by the US 

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for active 

immunization against invasive meningococcal disease 

caused by the 5 aforementioned serogroups. Protective 

antibody levels may be achieved within 7-10 days after 

vaccination. [9] Menomune is the only FDA-approved and 

available meningococcal vaccine in the United States. 

Meningococcal vaccination is recommended by the Centers 

for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for certain highrisk 

populations, such as military recruits, asplenic patients, 

anyone with an immune system disorder, household or 

institutional contacts of persons with meningococcal 

disease, and persons traveling to areas where 

meningococcal disease is common (such as West 

Africa). [9,10] According to the CDC, the vaccine should also 

be considered for laboratory workers who are routinely 

exposed to the meningococcal bacteria and for college 

students, especially those living in dormitories. Menomune 

is made available at many colleges, and awareness 

campaigns are conducted to inform students of this option. 



Continued from page 13– Bacterial Meningitis 

Meningococcal vaccination with Menomune is usually 

not recommended for children under the age of 2 years, 

unless they are determined to be at increased risk of 

exposure due to an outbreak or travel to a region where 

meningitis is endemic, or as short-term protection 

against Group A infection among infants at least 3 

months of age. [9] 

It is recommended that high-risk children between the 

ages of 3 months and 2 years receive 2 doses of 

vaccine, spaced 3 months apart. People older than 2 

years of age should receive a single dose of the 

meningococcal vaccine, but revaccination may be 

indicated for those at high risk. 

The CDC warns against vaccinating people who have 

had serious allergic reactions to previous doses of the 

vaccine. Those with moderate or severe illnesses 

should not be vaccinated until their health improves, 

but people who are mildly ill can still receive the 

vaccine. [10] Although there are risks associated with the 

meningococcal vaccine, (as there are with any vaccine), 

such as severe allergic reactions, fever, or pain, it has 

been determined to be much safer than the actual 

disease. 

Aventis Pasteur announced on April 7, 2003, that the 

FDA approved extending the use of the 10-dose vial of 

the vaccine, once reconstituted, from 10 to 35 days. 

The manufacturer believes this will help to alleviate 

physicians' concerns about not utilizing a 10-dose vial 

within the previously allowed interval and encourage 

healthcare providers to maintain a supply of 

Menomune. To obtain detailed information on 

Menomune vaccine schedules, see 

http://www.aventispasteur.com/Index.cfm?FA=Vaccines_Sc 

hedules. 

The pneumococcal 7-valent conjugate vaccine (Prevnar 

[Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Lederle Laboratory Division]) 

provides protection against some forms of pneumo 

coccal meningitis. It is manufactured by attaching the 

polysaccharides (purified surface components of the 

different strains) to a genetically modified nontoxic 

form of the diphtheria toxin protein called CRM197. 

Prevnar is the first multivalent conjugate 

pneumococcal vaccine for use in children under the age 

of 2 years. It targets the most common 7 strains of 

pneumococcus, which account for approximately 80% 

of invasive disease in infants. Prevnar can be 

administered as a series of 4 inoculations at 2, 4, 6, and 

12-15 months of age. [11] 

Prevnar was approved by the FDA in February 2000 

for immunization of infants against invasive 

pneumococcal disease. Infants follow a typical 

schedule, getting the vaccine at 2, 4, and 6 months of age 

followed by a fourth shot at 12 to 15 months of age. For 

previously unvaccinated older infants and children, who 

are beyond the age of the routine infant schedule, the 

dosing schedule will vary. [12,13] 

Polysaccharide vaccines against groups A and C, and 

against A, C, Y, and W-135 (Aventis Pasteur, Baxter, 

Chiron, GlaxoSmithKline, SmithKline Beecham, Wyeth) 

are available worldwide. The first successful capsular 

polysaccharide vaccines against groups A and C were 

developed in response to meningitis epidemics among 

military recruits in the United States in the 1970s and 

were widely tested in Africa, Europe, and Latin America. 

Although they demonstrated safety and efficacy in 

preventing group C disease in US military recruits and in 

controlling group A epidemics during mass campaigns in 

Africa, they have not achieved much success in young 

infants. For this reason, and because they fail to induce 

immunologic memory in patients of all age groups, they 

have not been routinely used. 

However, it was found that combining Hib and 

pneumococcal conjugate vaccines with a protein carrier 

improves the immunogenicity of polysaccharides. The 

resulting polysaccharide-protein conjugate vaccines have 

been shown to be safe, immunogenic in young infants, 

and offer long-term protection. [3] These conjugate 

vaccines include Haemophilus b Conjugate Vaccine 

(Diphtheria CRM 197 Protein Conjugate) (HbOC), 

manufactured by Praxis Biologics, Inc; Haemophilus b 

Conjugate Vaccine (Meningococcal Protein Conjugate) 

(PRP-OMP), manufactured by Merck Sharp and Dohme 

(newly licensed for use in infants); and Heptavalent 

CRM197 (PCV), manufactured by Wyeth Lederle. 

Table 2 summarizes the types of vaccination available 

worldwide for the prevention of meningococcal or 

pneumococcal meningitis. Worldwide efforts to develop 

new vaccines in the fight against meningitis continue. In 

1997, the WHO set up the International Coordinating 

Group on Vaccine Provision for Epidemic Meningitis in 

response to recent, devastating epidemics that paralyzed 

the routine healthcare systems and exhausted 

international stocks of vaccine in some regions of Africa. 

During the epidemic season, this organization distributes 

vaccine from an international stockpile to countries in 

the African meningitis belt. [3] 

Vaccination efforts can go a long way in minimizing the 

impact of this disease and reducing the number of deaths 

in its wake. The Meningitis Foundation of America has 

declared that August 2004 will be the first annual 

Meningitis Awareness and Prevention Month -- so what 

better time than now to start spreading the word about 

available vaccines? Continued on page 15 


Continued from page 14– Bacterial Meningitis 

Table 2. Vaccines Available Against Meningococcal 

Disease 

Type of 

Vaccine Description Recommendation 

Meningococcal 

polysaccharide 

Group A 


Group C 


Meningococcal 

group C 

conjugate 

vaccines 

Safe and effective 

for children aged ≥ 

2 years against 

serogroups A, C, 

Y, and W-135, but 

no protection 

against group B 

meningococci 

(which, in some 

countries, are the 

leading cause of 

endemic 

meningococcal 

disease) 

Shows poorer 

immunogenicity 

and shorter 

duration of 

protection in 

children and 

infants < 2 years of 

age 

No 

immunogenicity in 

children and 

infants < 2 years of 

age 

Safe and effective 

in all age groups, 

including infants 

Recommended for 

routine immunization 

of specific risk groups 

≥ 2 years of age; also 

recommended for use 

in controlling 

epidemics of 

meningococcal disease 

through large-scale 

emergency 

immunization of 

population at risk; 

approved by the FDA 

and available in the 

United States 

Generally not used in 

routine infant 

immunization 

programs; not 


and not available in 

the United States 

Generally not used in 

routine infant 

immunization 

programs; not 




Recommended for 

inclusion in routine 

childhood 

immunization 

programs, for 

protection of high-risk 

individuals, and for 

targeted vaccination 

during outbreaks; not 




Adapted from Weekly Epidemiological Record, October 4, 

2002. [14] 

References 

13. Meningitis Foundation of America. Stories: Aaron Paul 

Mart. Available at: 

http://www.musa.org/Stories/aaron_mart.htm. Accessed 

June 17, 2004. 

14. Incesu L, Khosla A. Meningitis, bacterial. eMedicine. 

Last updated June 6, 2003. Available at: 

http://www.emedicine.com/radio/topic441.htm. 

Accessed June 17, 2004. 


1. World Health Organization. Initiatives for Vaccine Research. 

State of the art of new vaccines: research & development. 

Available at: 

http://www.who.int/vaccine_research/documents/new_vaccines 

/en/index7.html. Accessed June 17, 2004. 

2. Aronin SI, Quagliarello VJ. Clinical pearls: bacterial 

meningitis. Infect Med. 2003;20:142-153. 

3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Division of 

Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases. Meningococcal disease: 

general information. Available at: 

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/meningococcal_ 

g.htm. Accessed June 17, 2004. 

4. Spiro CE, Spiro DM. Acute meningitis: focus on bacterial 

infection. Clin Rev. 2004:14, 53-60. 

5. World Health Organization. Meningitis: Impact of the problem. 

Available at: 

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/meningococcal/impact/en/. 


6. Purcell B, Samuelsson S, Hahne SJ, et al. Effectiveness of 

antibiotics in preventing meningococcal disease after a case: 

systematic review. BMJ. 2004;328:1339. 

7. Aventis Pasteur. Menomune Product Information. Available at: 

http://www.vaccineshoppe.com/US_PDF/Menomune_4813.48 

75_12.03.pdf. Accessed June 17, 2004. 

8. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National 

Immunization Program: Meningococcal. Available at: 

http://www.cdc.gov/nip/publications/VIS/default.htm#mening. 


9. US Department of Health and Human Services. HHS News. 

First pneumococcal vaccine approved for infants and toddlers 

[press release]. Available at: 

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/NEW00716.html. 

Accessed June 17, 2004 

10. Wyeth (Lederle Laboratories Division). Prevnar dosing 

schedule. Available at: 

http://www.prevnar.com/parent_dosing.htm. Accessed June 17, 

2004. 

11. Frequently asked questions about pneumococcal disease and 

Prevnar. Available at: 

http://www.prevnar.com/parent_qa.htm#eight. Accessed June 

17, 2004. 

12. World Health Organization. Meningococcal vaccines: 

polysaccharide and polysaccharide conjugate vaccines 

[Position Paper]. Wkly Epidemiol Record. 2002;77:329-340. 

Available at: 

http://www.who.int/docstore/wer/pdf/2002/wer7740.pdf. 


http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/481019 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Continued from page 3 – Yoruba Spirituaity and 

Philosophy 

Egungun and men. The priest is able to thus suggest actions 

and give solutions through his divination with these deities. 

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/9912/yorubaspirit.html 

☻☻☻☻☻☻




DIET IS MAJOR FACTOR IN POLIO PREVENTION, DR. 

SANDLER BELIEVES 

From The Asheville Citizen, August 5, 1948 

A theory concerning a major cause for human infection 

with polio has been advanced by Dr. Benjamin P. 

Sandler, of Asheville, N. C. 

Dr. Sandler, a recognized authority in nutrition 

research, was the first doctor to transmit polio to the 

rabbit, believed to be immune, a test he completed in 

1938. 

His theory is two-fold — he believes he has found a 

major cause for polio in humans, and he believes that 

preventive measures are simple, easy, and quickly 

applicable. 

Dr. Sandler believes that the major cause is the low 

blood sugar in the human body, caused, paradoxically 

as it may sound, by eating too much sweets and starchy 

food. 

The preventive measures? Cut out foods containing 

sugars and starches. 

In 24 hours, according to Dr. Sandler, the body can 

build up sufficient resistance to the polio virus to 

prevent disease. The diet would have to continue, of 

course. 

"The crisis is here and hours have become precious," he 

said. "I have been impelled to bring this directly to the 

newspapers because of my profound conviction that, 

through community cooperation and general acceptance 

of a diet low in sugars and starches, this epidemic can 

be got under control in about two weeks time. 

"I am willing to state without reserve that such a diet, 

strictly observed, can build up in 24 hours time a 

resistance in the human body sufficiently strong to 

combat the disease successfully. The answer lies 

simply in maintaining a normal blood sugar." 

Here is Dr. Sandler’s program: 

(1) Eliminate from the diet sugar and foods containing 

sugar, such as: soft drinks; fruit juices (except tomato 

juice); ice cream; cakes, pastries, pies; candies; canned 

and preserved fruits. 

(2) Cut down the consumption of starchy foods, such 

as: bread, rolls, pancakes; potatoes; rice; corn; cereals 

and grits. 

(3) Substitute for such starch foods and starchy 

vegetables, the following: tomatoes, string beans, 

cucumbers, greens, lettuce, turnips, carrots, red beets, 

cabbage, onions and soybeans. 

(4) Do not eat fresh fruits or melons more than once a 

day, and then only in small quantities. 

(5) Eat more protective protein foods, such as: eggs, 

pork and beef products; fish (fresh or canned); poultry; 

milk, cream and cheese. 

Eat three substantial meals a day, advises Dr. Sandler. 

And avoid exertion and fatigue because they are known 

to be associated with low blood sugar content. Avoid 

swimming in cold water. Rest as much as possible. 

Dr. Sandler suggests that the recommended diet be 

followed until the polio danger season officially is 

declared over by local health authorities. 

"One of the puzzling characteristics of polio," Dr. 

Sandler said yesterday, "has been its prevalence in 

warm weather. Many people cut down on protective 

protein foods— such as meat, fish and poultry — 

because of a mistaken idea that a ‘light’ diet is better 

for them in warm weather. And they increase 

consumption of cooling foods and beverages — most 

of them heavily sweetened. It is this increase in 

consumption of sugar that produces a lowering of blood 

sugar and thereby a lowering of the body’s resistance to 

the polio virus and other diseases." 

Here is the basis for the Sandler theories: 

A normal blood sugar content of 100 milligrams in 

each 100 cubic centimeters of blood is necessary to 

maintain resistance to bodily infection. Any appreciable 

lowering of this blood sugar content (say, to from 75 to 

55 mg.) can lower the barriers and permit bodily 

invasion by the virus of polio. Continued on page 17 


Continued from page 16 – Diet is Major Factor in Polio 

Prevention 

Dr. Sandler offers as the scientific basis for these 

statements research done with rabbits and monkeys. This 

research he began at Willard Parker hospital in New York 

during the metropolitan area’s record polio outbreak of 

1931. 

Authorities had noted that rabbits normally are resistant 

to polio virus. Dr. Sandler, observing that studies showed 

that in rabbits the blood sugar never dropped below 100 

mg., began pondering the far-differing case of the rhesus 

monkey, a notoriously easy prey to poliomyelitis. In 

monkeys, blood sugar content frequently was observed to 

fall to abnormally low levels, around 50 mg. 

Furthermore, observations on humans who had recovered 

from polio revealed low blood sugar — hypoglycemia is 

the technical term — to be frequently present. 

From these — rabbits, monkeys and humans — Dr. 

Sandler first deducted that low blood sugar could be an 

important factor in susceptibility to the polio virus. 

The job was to check this deduction through experiments 

in which the blood sugar content of rabbits would be 

lowered and their susceptibility to polio again tested. 

In the laboratories of the Morrisania hospital in New 

York 10 years ago, Dr. Sandler began a series of 

experiments in which insulin was injected in rabbits to 

lower the blood sugar for periods of four to six hours. 

Once the blood sugar content had been thus dropped, the 

doctor attempted again to transmit the polio virus to the 

normally highly resistant animals. The rabbits then fell 

easy victims. 

The animals showed evidence of polio infection within 

eight to 10 hours after intracerebral inoculation with the 

virus, indicating rapid spread of the disease during the 

period of hypoglycemia. (Dr. Sandler reported on these 

studies in the American Journal of Pathology in January, 

1941). Some rabbits died within 14 hours after infection. 

Characteristic nerve-cell destruction with paralysis was in 

evidence. 

Chronic hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) is a common 

disorder in childhood and adolescence, Dr. Sandler points 

out, and is readily influenced by diet as well as exertion. 

This, he believes, serves to explain the high incidence of 

polio in younger age groups, as well as the frequently 

reported occurrence of the disease following strenuous 

physical exertion. 

Dr. Sandler received his degree in medicine at New York 

University in 1931. He interned at Morrisania city 

hospital in New York City and later was on the staff there 

as well as Polyclinic and Montefiore hospitals in New 

York city. From July, 1941, until February, 1947, he was 

in the U. S. naval medical corps, attaining the rank of 

commander. 

He has done considerable research in polio and the 

relationship between diet and disease. He has published 

six papers on the latter subject, as well as papers on other 

medical subjects. His research includes a period assisting 

the research staff at Willard Parker hospital in New York 

city during the epidemic there in 1931, and independent 

research later, when he "gave" polio to a rhesus monkey, 

transmitted it to a rabbit, and then to another monkey. 

Summarizing the evidence for my contention that low 

blood sugar is a factor of susceptibility to polio, and that 

a diet aimed to prevent low blood sugar can prevent 

polio, I submit the following: 

1. Low blood sugar is not present in the rabbit, a nonsusceptible 

animal. 

2. Low blood sugar is present in monkeys, a susceptible 

animal. 

3. Inducing low blood sugar in rabbits with insulin 

renders the animals susceptible. 

4. Physical exertion, swimming in cold water, predispose 

to polio because they may be associated with low blood 

sugar. 

5. The diet campaign aimed to prevent low blood sugar 

and thereby prevent polio had a significant effect on the 

number of cases during the 1948 epidemic both locally in 

the city of Asheville, the state of North Carolina, and in 

the nearby southeastern states as shown by the earlier 

peak dates in those states. The diet campaign also had a 

significant effect on the number of cases throughout the 

country as shown by the change in the trend of the 1948 

epidemic when compared with the trend in 1946. 

6. The unique change in the graph comparing 1946 with 

1948 is exceptional, in that the change occurred 

immediately after the release of the diet instructions, and 

because such a change had never before occurred in the 

history of polio in this country. 

7. Although the 1949 polio epidemic for the country as a 

whole was more severe than the 1948 epidemic, the city 

of Asheville and the state of North Carolina experienced 

the greatest reduction in the number of cases in 1949 in 

spite of the fact that North Carolina had the second 

highest case rate in the country in 1948. The state of 

North Carolina had a case rate of 66.3 in 1948 and a case 

rate of only 6.3 in 1949. South Dakota had a case rate 

153.9 in 1948, the highest in the nation, but showed a 

reduction in 1949 to only 63.0. 



Continued from page 17 – Diet is Major Factor in Polio 

Prevention 

8. Polio epidemics have occurred throughout the world in 

past years only in those countries with high per capita 

sugar consumption. Epidemics are unknown in countries 

with low sugar consumption. The greater the sugar 

consumption the more severe the epidemic. 

"Foods must be in the condition in which they are found 

in nature or at least in a condition as close as possible to 

that found in nature." 

HIPPOCRATES 

http://www.whale.to/v/sandler13.html 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Continued from page 10 – Nigeria Meningitis 

Death Toll Surpasses 2000 

About two-thirds of Nigeria's 36 states are affected by the 

epidemic, the ministry said. Nigeria is Africa's most 

populous country with a population of more than 140 

million. 

UNICEF said last month that more than 2,500 people had 

been killed by meningitis this year in West and Central 

Africa in what could be the worst epidemic for five years. 

Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad are considered 

Africa's high-risk zone. 

Meningitis is the inflammation of the tissue surrounding 

the brain and spinal cord, and can be caused by viral or 

bacterial infections. It spreads mainly through kisses, 

sneezes, coughs and in close living quarters. 

The meningitis death toll in Nigeria since December is 

almost 50 times the number of people killed worldwide 

by the H1N1 swine flu virus. But the speed with which it 

has spread underscores the potential dangers if swine flu 

reaches Africa. 

Basic healthcare is limited in rural parts of Nigeria, where 

most people live on less than $2 a day, despite the 

country's huge oil resources. Many Nigerians fear that an 

outbreak of swine flu would be devastating. 

The Health Ministry said no suspected case of swine flu 

had been recorded in the country but that it had taken 

steps to contain any outbreak. 

The worst recent meningitis epidemic in West and 

Central Africa occurred in 1996-97 when an estimated 

100,000 people were infected in Nigeria and 50,000 in 

Niger. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30604930/ 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Uganda: Meningitis 

Contained 

Anthony Bugembe 


Kampala — THE health ministry has contained the 

meningitis outbreak in the country. 

"We are on top of the situation. No new cases have been 

reported since January 28," said Dr. Sam Zaramba, the 

director general of health services. 

He said there was increased awareness about the disease 

in the affected areas, which saw many people receive 

treatment and vaccination. 

The outbreak hit the country in December. Uganda is one 

of the countries in the African meningitis belt. 

The epidemic, that started in Hoima and Arua districts, 

also spread to Masindi, Adjumani and Moyo. By 

February 3, 336 people had been affected, while 42 had 

died. 

Last month, the ministry delivered drugs and financial 

support to the affected areas. 

Dr. Nathan Kenya Mugisha, the director for clinical 

services, said the ministry and the World Health 

Organisation had vaccinated people aged between two 

and 30 years in the affected districts. 

"This age group is more vulnerable to meningitis and our 

assessment teams continue doing their work. We have 

also advised people to avoid congestion especially in the 

affected districts," Mugisha said. 

"We allowed the schools in the affected districts to open 

for the new academic year because our assessment teams 

have reported no new cases. This is also one of the signs 

that we are managing the epidemic," he added. 

Meningitis is an inflammation of the meninges, the lining 

surrounding the brain and spinal cord. The disease is 

caused by bacteria and is transmitted through contact 

with the respiratory or throat secretions from an infected 

person. 

Last year, the country also suffered cholera, botulism, 

ebola, marburg, typhoid, measles and Hepatitis E 

outbreaks. 

While presenting the status report on major disease 

outbreaks to Parliament last week, health state minister 

Richard Nduhura said all the diseases had been 

controlled, save for Hepatitis E. 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 


Burkina Faso: Five Million at 

Risk As Meningitis Death Toll 

Climbs 


Ouagadougou — Amid warnings of a major meningitis 

outbreak in Africa this year, epidemic levels of the 

bacterial infection have broken out in parts of Burkina 

Faso. 

"Despite the efforts of the government and its partners in 

2008, the vaccination campaign did not reach all the 

districts currently facing the outbreak," Alain Yoda, 

Burkina Faso's Minister of health said in a press 

conference in early January. 

Overall 774 cases have been reported, with Mandogara 

district close to the Cote d'Ivoire border at epidemic 

levels and three other health districts on high alert. 

Souleymane Sanou, director general at the Ministry of 

Health, estimated five million people are now at risk in 

20 health districts across the country. 

The government has received one million vaccine doses 

to fight the outbreak. 

Vaccinations missed 

Dr. Souleymane Sanou, director-general of health at the 

Ministry of Health, said the high number of people at risk 

in Burkina Faso is partly because the government could 

not predict exactly which regions would be affected, and 

had not carried out vaccinations in all of them. 

Just one of the affected districts has been immunised in 

the past three years, and altogether, 19 out of 55 districts 

have not been covered, he said. 

"The vaccine against meningitis immunises people for 

three years," Sanou said. "People in the affected regions 

were immunised over three years ago." 

Burkina Faso lacked vaccination drugs and the money to 

buy it, leaving health workers no choice but to wait for 

the illnesses to begin before they could react, officials 

said. 

Dr. André Ouedraogo, region adviser at the World Health 

Organization (WHO) blamed donors. Prevention of 

epidemics that might not happen is costly, so donors 

prefer to wait for a crisis to hit before providing the funds 

for an emergency response, he said. 

WHO asked donors to provide US$14 million over 2008 

to purchase 12 million doses of vaccine and injection 

materials, to cover transport, storage and insurance costs 

llto boost prevention efforts across the region. 


Next Steps 

Minister of Health Yoda said the government needs a 

further US$4.5 million to add to its existing US$2.2 

million if it is to prepare for an epidemic across all 55 of 

the country's health districts. 

This money would go towards reacting to the current 

outbreak through vaccination campaigns and monitoring 

the spread of the disease, as well as trying to prevent 

future outbreaks through raising awareness and ensuring 

all health districts have the medicines they need, he said. 

"We need our partners to step in to make up the budget," 

said Sylvestre Tiendébéogo, director of the fight against 

diseases at the Ministry of Health. 

Burkina Faso's main donors are the European Union and 

the World Bank, while France is the biggest bilateral 

donor. 

Cost effective 

Maxime Yameogo, health coordinator of the International 

Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), said more could be 

done to prevent the disease from spreading, even without 

millions of donor dollars. 

The IFRC trains volunteers around the region to try to 

spread health messages in rural and urban areas and to 

help people know how to avoid contracting the illness in 

the first place. 

At least 80 million people living in 21 countries from 

Ethiopia in East Africa to Mauritania in West Africa that 

make up a region often called Africa's 'meningitis belt' 

might need to be injected with preventative vaccines this 

year, according to a WHO spokesperson. 

Epidemic levels of meningitis have also been reported 

elsewhere in West Africa in late 2007 and early 2008. 

250 cases have been recorded in two northern Nigerian 

states, Jigawa and Katsina, while 18 people have died in 

Mali, Niger and Ghana, according to the WHO. 

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the 

United Nations ] 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Burkina Faso: Meningitis 

Epidemics in Vaccinated 

Areas 

10 April 2008 

Ouagadougou — People vaccinated against meningitis 

are supposed to have protection for three years but health 

officials have announced that meningitis epidemics have 

occurred in several areas where populations had recently 


Continued from page 19- Burkina Faso: Meningitis 

Epidemics in Vaccinated Areas 

been immunized. 

"[Health researchers] are currently collecting information 

so as to identify the factors explaining the recurrence of 

the epidemic in districts where populations have been 

vaccinated", Ousmane Badolo, head of the epidemiologic 

surveillance department at the ministry of health, told 

IRIN. 

Vaccination campaigns target people between 2 to 30 

years old; according to the ministry of health, 80 to 90 

percent of the victims of meningitis belong to that age 

group. 

A total of 714 people have died since 1 January out of 

7,184 cases. 

Several different bacteria can cause meningitis which is 

an inflammation of the protective membranes covering 

the central nervous system. The Neisseria sero-group is 

one of the most important to watch because it often leads 

to epidemics, experts say. 

Badolo, the epidemiologist, said that health research 

teams from the UN World Health Organization and USbased 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have 

come to Burkina Faso to investigate. "This is the first 

time that such research is being conducted," Badolo said, 

adding that at this stage he could only guess why the 

vaccination programmes have not worked. 

"Perhaps it is because of population M displacement," he 

said, "for instance in gold mining areas people are often 

coming and going." 

The health researchers will focus their work on the 

districts of Réo in the central west of the country, Boulsa 

in the central north, Titao in the north and in Sig-nonghin 

a district in the north of the capital Ouagadougou. 

The populations in each of those four districts were 

vaccinated last year yet each has reached epidemic 

thresholds. 

A total of five out of the country's 55 districts have 

reached the epidemic threshold and 14 others are on alert. 

Meanwhile, 3.5 million people have been vaccinated this 

year out of a population of 14 million. The government 

said it is in the process of procuring a million more 

vaccines with the help of UN Children's Agency 

UNICEF. 

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the 



☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Africa: New Meningitis 

Vaccine Nears Debut 

12 March 2009 

Dakar — A new vaccine that promises to eradicate 

meningitis in Africa will be rolled out in a mass 

campaign in West Africa this year, according to the UN 

World Health Organization (WHO). 

Twenty-five million doses of the meningococcal A, or 

MenA, vaccine are currently in production in India and 

the drug is expected to be introduced in Burkina Faso late 

2009. 

"This is the beginning of the end of the disease," said 

Mark LaForce, the director of the Meningitis Vaccine 

Project (MVP), an initiative of WHO and the non-profit 

PATH that has been developing the vaccine since 2003. 

The vaccine currently used in the region spanning from 

Senegal to Ethiopia - called the 'meningitis belt' for its 

vulnerability to deadly outbreaks - offers at most two 

years of protection, according to MVP. 

While the disease is more deadly in the meningitis belt 

than anywhere else in the world, there have been no 

prevention vaccines for the strain found in Africa- until 

now, according to clinical trials with MenA. 

Recent studies with patients age one to 29 in India, Mali, 

and The Gambia have shown that the new vaccine will 

provide long-term protection. Lead researcher LaForce 

has said the drug "will allow the elimination of the 

meningococcal [meningitis] epidemics that have afflicted 

the continent [Africa] for more than 100 years." 

Months away from the vaccine's US$29-million donorfinanced 

debut in three countries - Burkina Faso, Mali 

and Niger - LaForce told IRIN the deadly bacteria that 

attack the spinal cord and brain lining cannot be wiped 

out overnight. 

"Look at polio and how long it took to eradicate that. We 

are looking at 10 years at least [for eradication]," he said. 

More than 45 years after the polio vaccine was licensed, 

there were still more than 1,600 infections worldwide in 

2008, according to WHO - down from 350,000 cases 20 

years ago. 

LaForce told IRIN the MenA vaccination campaign's 

goal is to reach "herd immunity", in which if at least 70 

percent of the population is immunised, then the entire 

population is protected. 

When asked if people who might refuse vaccinations 

could thwart herd immunity, LaForce said the response 



Continued from page 20– New Meningitis Vaccine Nears 

Debut 

has been "tremendous" in clinical trials to the vaccine and 

that "70 percent [immunisation] coverage will not be hard 

to reach." 

LaForce has said that "a single case of meningitis can 

drive a family into a spiral of poverty from which they 

may never recover." 

Even with antibiotic treatment, at least 10 percent of 

people stricken with meningitis die and 20 percent are 

left with permanent disability including mental 

retardation, deafness or amputation, according to WHO. 

WHO aims to immunise 250 million people in the 

meningitis belt by 2015. The Global Alliance for Vaccine 

and Immunization (GAVI) has agreed to create an 

emergency stockpile of the MenA vaccine starting in 

2011 with an initial investment of $55 million. 

WHO has pledged to "fast-track" approval of the vaccine 

as soon as it is licensed in India, according to the director 

of WHO's Initiative for Vaccine Research, Marie-Paule 

Kieny. 

Kieny told IRIN the vaccine is scheduled to become a 

routine childhood immunisation by 2012. 

Potential obstacles to mass immunisation are new 

meningitis strains and inadequate funds to continue 

beyond the three roll-out countries, according to Kieny. 

MenA is expected to cost governments 40 cents per dose; 

current meningitis vaccines cost up to $1.58, according to 

WHO. 

LaForce said the challenge in developing MenA has been 

in part financial. "These are the poorest areas in the 

world. Large pharmaceuticals were not interested in 

producing a specific product for Africa." 

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded MVP's 

creation, research and development since 2001. 

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the 


http://allafrica.com/stories/ 200903120711.html 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Chad: W 135 Meningitis 

Shows Up After Nearly a 

Decade 

16 April 2009 

N'djamena — Health officials in Chad are gearing up to 

vaccinate hundreds of thousands of people against 

meningitis, which as of 14 April had killed 102 of 871 


people infected in 2009, the health minister says. 

Chad's Health Ministry and the World Health 

Organization (WHO) have asked WHO's International 

Coordinating Group on Vaccine Provision for 

Epidemic Meningitis Control for vaccines against the 

potent W 135 strain, Nedardoum Apollos, WHO 

epidemiologist in Chad, told IRIN. 

"We last saw W 135 in Chad about 10 years ago," 

Chad's Health Minister Ngombaye Djaïbé told IRIN. 

The presence of W 135 is "very worrying," he said. "It 

is highly virulent and the vaccine is expensive." 

In the coming days health officials and aid workers 

plan to begin vaccinating - one million people for W 

135 and two million for A, Health Minister Djaïbé said. 

Of 12 identified serogroups of the meningitis bacteria, 

four - Neisseria meningitidis A, B and C and W 135 - 

are recognised to cause epidemics, WHO says. 

Up to 2002 the W 135 strain broke out only in sporadic 

cases in Africa, but that year it affected 14,453 people 

and killed 1,743 in Burkina Faso, according to WHO. 

Health Minister Djaïbé declared a meningitis epidemic 

in Chad on 14 April. Health ministry officials told IRIN 

that to date infections have been reported in the regions 

of Chari Baguirmi, Mandoul and Tandjilé, and in parts 

of the capital N'djamena. 

The 11.7-percent mortality rate, though lower than 

during past epidemics in Chad, is higher than in Niger 

and Nigeria- the two countries with the highest number 

of infections this year, where the death rate is about 

five percent. The WHO defines successful epidemic 

control as keeping the mortality rate below 10 percent. 

Djaïbé said the lethality rate is lower than in previous 

epidemics in Chad "thanks to the treatment and 

medicines now more widely available with the help of 

partner organisations." 

Fatimé Djibrine, who works in the pediatric unit of 

Liberty Hospital in N'djamena, told IRIN: "We saw just 

one case of meningitis in this unit in January, then nine 

cases in February, with one death." She said people 

must rush to the nearest health centre for antibiotic 

treatment at the first signs of the illness, which include 

stiff neck, high fever, headaches and sensitivity to light. 

Meningitis, which attacks the brain and spinal column, 

is transmitted through droplets of respiratory or throat 

secretions, according to WHO. The disease is endemic 

across the Sahel region from Senegal in the west to 

Ethiopia in the east. 


☻☻☻☻☻☻




CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME: THE HIDDEN POLIO 

Dr. William Campbell Douglas 

Second Opinion Newsletter 

Periodically, we receive letters such as the following (but 

surprisingly few, considering the controversial nature of 

the subject): 

"I like your publication and gain a lot of useful 

information from it. But I question all of your ideas 

because of your stand on vaccinations. It is perfectly 

obvious that the major infections diseases caused by 

viruses have been eliminated by vaccinations." 

This letter is fairly typical. Most of them are not 

vindictive or insulting. They are simply, like this 

example, disbelieving that something as "obvious" and 

effective as vaccinations can be challenged by a medical 

doctor. As I explained to one of my medical colleagues 

who supports vaccination almost to the degree of a 

religion, it took a lot of serious pondering and soulsearching 

to join Dr. Robert Mendelsohn in his crusade 

against immunizations. It's not easy to take a stand that 

you know will alienate 95 percent of your medical 

colleagues and 99 percent of the scientific community. 

Post hoc, ergo prompter hoc reasoning states that "A" 

happened, then "B" happened, thus "A" caused "B." So if 

we gave children polio shots and the polio epidemic 

ceases, then it is "obvious" that the vaccine halted the 

epidemic. But this faith in the polio vaccines will not 

even stand up to this faulty reasoning because... 

The Salk vaccine failed completely. And the Sabin 

vaccine was a disaster. It caused many cases of polio and 

showed no relationship to the disease except for an 

increase in polio during the early '60s, caused by the 

vaccine itself. And now we have the sensational findings 

from the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 

which strongly indicate that polio did not go away at all, 

but now manifests itself as chronic fatigue syndrome. The 

public press is strangely silent on this sensational report - 

- I wonder why. 

I remember 20 years ago hearing someone to whom I 

paid little attention (although the seed was planted) say 

that polio had not gone away. He said that since the 

advent of the shots, polio had changed and was 

called something else by the neurologists. I was 

intrigued, but I quickly discarded the idea -- where 

were the thousands of paralyzed kids, the iron 

lungs, the shriveled limbs? I had not seen a case of 

active polio (I thought) in my entire career. Then I 

heard that the neurologists were calling chronic 

fatigue syndrome (CFS) "Myalgic 

Encephalomyelitis." That's funny I thought, why 

are they calling it "myalgic," which means muscle; 

"encephalo," which means brain; and "myelitis," 

which means inflammation of the covering of the 

nerves? 

Being slow, I just decided they gave it this fancy 

moniker because it sounded more scientific than 

chronic fatigue syndrome. 

And then, almost like a divine revelation, I saw the 

report in the New York Academy of Sciences and 

said: "Of course, why didn't I think of that--chronic 

fatigue syndrome is the modern form of 

poliomyelitis. "Now don't hang up on me. I know it 

sounds like a front-page piece from the National 

Inquirer, but this is from legitimate research. As 

you may recall, polio is contracted from ingesting 

the polio virus, which then goes to the small 

intestine and reproduces there. With the use of the 

vaccines, especially the oral Sabin vaccine, the 

traditional polio viruses were replaced by other 

members of the same family called Coxsackie 

viruses. 

When the Coxsackie viruses were first isolated 

from CFS patients, it wasn't realized that we were 

simply dealing with a new form of polio. This new 

polio was caused by the replacement of the polio 

viruses with their brothers, the Coxsackie viruses. 

When the Coxsackie viruses were first isolated 

from CFS patients, it wasn't realized that we were 



Continued from page 22 – Chronic Fatigue Sydrome 

simply dealing with a new form of polio. This new polio 

was caused by the replacement of the polio viruses with 

their brothers, the Coxsackie viruses. As the researchers 

didn't get the connection at first, these new polio cases 

were labled "post-polio syndrome," "chronic fatigue 

syndrome," and "myalgic encephalomyelitis." 

Modern genetics has confirmed the genetic similarity 

between polio viruses, Coxsackie, and another group 

called the Echo viruses. Before the advent of the Salk and 

Sabin vaccines, there were only three polio viruses. Now, 

with the drastic alteration of the human gut over the years 

as a result of these vaccines, there are at least 72 viral 

strains that can cause polio-like diseases. 

Sadly, this evidence of the changing of polio rather than 

the elimination of it is not new. The first epidemic of 

"atypical polio" was reported in Los Angeles in 1934 and 

there was another epidemic of CFS called "abortive 

poliomyelitis" in Switzerland in 1939. After the 

introduction of the vaccines, the trend toward a new polio 

rapidly increased and it has been recognized by the 

neurologists for 40 years. The terms "atypical" and 

"abortive" polio have been quietly dropped because they 

would point to the awful realization that polio is more 

common than ever and caused by polio vaccination. 

The neurologists and the vaccinators just seem to have 

gone into a state of denial about the ubiquitousness of 

polio. The GPs and the internists were unaware of the 

polio research of the 1950s, and the pediatricians were 

completely out of it because CFS/polio/ME is a disease 

of adults -- "infantile paralysis," as polio was called, has 

become in the modern era "adult paresis" (muscle 

weakness). 

We now know that chronic fatigue syndrome isn’t a new 

disease, but simply an "aborted form" of the more serious 

paralytic polio. There is just no doubt about it; it's only a 

question of getting the public health bureaucrats, the 

pediatricians, and doctors in general to face up to the 

facts. 

Dr. Richard Bruno, New Jersey Medical School, 

Department of Physical Medicine, pointed out, in the 

New York Academy report, that of more than a dozen 

outbreaks of CFS before the introduction of the Salk 

vaccine, nine occurred during or immediately after polio 

outbreaks and several of the victims of CFS had been 

taking care of polio patients. 

As the polio vaccination program opened the door for 

these opportunistic relatives of polio, the CFS epidemic 

gathered steam and the new polio was upon us. One of 

the forerunners in this research is Dr. Elizabeth Dowsett, 

a microbiologist from Britain. Dr. Dowsett states unequi- 

vocally what you don't hear in this country: True CFS 

(as differentiated from other fatigue states) "strikes one 

clinically as being polio-like and it has often been 

diagnosed as 'nonparalytic polio.' " 

Dowsett says the term chronic fatigue syndrome was 

"an unfortunate mistake" because this is truly a 

neurological disease and the practice of doctors waiting 

six months before doing anything so they could label it 

"chronic," obviated the pollibility of identifying the 

virus. The harm has been done and the patient now has 

chronic new-age polio that will not be amenable to 

treatment. 

I always considered CFS to be some kind of infection 

and wondered why photoluminescence didn't cure it. 

But, as was proven with old-fashioned polio 40 years 

ago, light blook therapy only works on the acute form 

of the disease, even including the usually deadly bulbar 

polio (see Into the Light). When there are lesions in the 

brain, which can now be demonstrated in CFS patients 

with MRI and other advanced radiologic methods, it is 

too late to effect a cure. Parenthetically, how can CFS 

be a neurotic problem, as the psychiatrists and many 

real doctors have labelled it, when it can be 

demonstrated that there are changes in the brain? 

We know that multiple vaccinations, such as those 

given our soldiers during the Gulf War, can cause what 

is known as "provocation polio." The evidence is fairly 

convincing that the "Gulf War Syndrome" is simply 

vaccination-induced chronic fatigue syndrome. One 

argument against these new scientific findings needs to 

be countered before it arises, because it's a 

misconception that confuses the public. It goes like 

this: "If CFS is a form of polio, and these 72 viruses are 

in everybody's intestine, then why doesn't everybody 

come down with CFS? 

Simply put, it's because everybody doesn't contract a 

disease because they are exposed to it. If they did, we 

would all be dead or at least sick all the time. Some 

people have stronger immune systems than others and 

that's why you must do everything within reason to 

protect your health. During the polio epidemic in the 

'30s and '40s, most of the children who "caught" polio 

didn't even know they had it. It was passed off as a cold 

and no one ever knew about it. This is comparable to 

tuberculosis, where many people are found on X ray of 

the chest to have clear evidence of having had TB, but 

they never knew it. 

The evidence is overwhelming that Salk and Sabin did 

nothing but cause tremendous confusion in the medical 

world by modifying the polio disease, as Pasteur did 

over a hundred years ago with so many other diseases. 



Central African Republic: 

Scramble to Contain 

Meningitis Epidemic 


Nairobi — Aid agencies and the authorities in the Central 

African Republic (CAR) have joined forces to vaccinate 

hundreds of thousands of people at risk of meningitis in the 

northwest of the country, officials said. 

Toby Lanzer, the UN humanitarian coordinator in CAR, 

said the latest vaccination effort was targeting at least 

80,000 people at the centre of the epidemic. 

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian 

Affairs (OCHA) reported on 11 February that meningitis 

was spreading across three northwestern districts and was 

threatening up to one million people. The announcement 

followed a declaration by national authorities of an 

outbreak of meningitis after several cases and numerous 

deaths were reported in Ouham, Ouham Pendé and Nana- 

Grebizi districts in the first five weeks of this year. 

"In the town of Kaga Bandoro and neighbouring villages 

alone, 38 cases of meningitis have been reported, of which 

several were lethal," OCHA reported. "The ill are now 

being treated." 

Meningitis takes its name from the meninges, the protective 

membranes covering the central nervous system, which 

become inflamed as a result of infection by bacteria, viruses 

or other agents. Meningitis can kill unless quickly treated 

with antibiotics. 

The type spreading in CAR is caused by the 

meningococcus bacterium. Symptoms can rapidly progress 

from fever, headache and neck stiffness to coma and, in 

around 10 percent of cases, death. 

CAR is part of the meningitis belt that stretches from 

Senegal to Ethiopia. Annual outbreaks occur mainly in the 

dry season (January-May). 

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) had requested 

US$100,000 from the UN Emergency Response Fund 

(ERF), and the money has been released to buy vaccines. 

The ERF is part of an aid programme in CAR, supported by 

donors, with $69 million to protect, feed and care for 

people displaced and affected by violence. 

Ruhala Bissimwa, the medical coordinator for Merlin in 

Kaga Bandoro, who has been coordinating the fight against 

meningitis, said the country was beyond the threshold for 

an epidemic, which is 10 cases per 100,000 people. 

"We are very worried, very afraid," he said. "Outbreaks are 

being reported in new communes, such as Ngenga in Nana- 

Grebizi district, and it is continuing to spread. 

"The most important thing is to make vaccines 

available to everyone. We are more than a month into 

this situation and we are still waiting for vaccines." 

OCHA said national stocks of vaccines for the disease 

were running short. 

"Protecting the people in the north of the Central 

African Republic will prevent meningitis from 

spreading to the rest of the country and into 

neighbouring Chad," OCHA said. 

The agency said the health situation in the conflict-torn 

north of the country remained dire, with over threequarters 

of the population having little, if any, access to 

healthcare. Life expectancy stands at 43 years, one of 

the lowest in the world. 

Violence affects at least one million people in northern 

CAR. OCHA estimates there are 197,000 internally 

displaced people in the country while 98,000 others 

have sought refuge in Chad, Cameroon, or Sudan. 

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of 

the United Nations ] 

http://allafrica.com/stories /200802130507.html 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Continued from page 23– Chronic Fatigue 

Multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, CFS, 

Tourette syndrome, "learning disabilities," Guillain 

Barre Syndrome, idiopathic epilepsy, and many other 

neurological conditions may very well be just forms of 

polio induced by these vaccines. Salk and Sabin opened 

Pandora's box and we now have 72 types of polio rather 

than three. But it will be a long time before you read 

about this in the mass media -- what would this 

revelation do to the credibility of the vaccination 

programs so fervently promoted by the federal and state 

bureaucrats and the public health doctors? 

ACTION TO TAKE 

You must resist compulsory vaccination of your 

children. It won't be easy. If you have no choice in the 

matter, give the child some vitamin C (in dropper form, 

if necessary). Then see a homeopathic doctor about a 

remedy to protect the child from the coming assault on 

his immune system. 

Ref: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 

1955:273; Neurology, 1954:4; British Medical Journal, 

1961:1061; What Doctors Don't Tell You, January 

1996; Lancet, October 8, 1994; Journal of the 

American Medical Association, 1947:134. 

http://www.whale.to/w/douglas.html 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 


New Hope in the Fight Against 

Meningitis 

Dr. Abraham Hodgson 

30 March 2007 

Navrongo, Ghana — Right now Africa may be gearing up 

for a recurring health crisis: a major outbreak of 

meningococcal meningitis. About every 8-12 years, 

massive epidemics sweep across the "Meningitis Belt," 

which stretches from Senegal to Ethiopia. With new 

vaccines on the horizon, modern medicine may soon 

provide better tools to fight this scourge. 

Meningococcal meningitis is a bacterial infection that 

strikes with lightning speed. If left untreated, meningitis 

can kill up to half of those infected within 48 hours. 

Survivors can suffer permanent disabilities such as mental 

retardation, deafness, or paralysis. 

Eleven years ago, during one of the largest epidemics on 

record, meningitis affected more than 250,000 and killed 

more than 25,000 people. In addition, outbreaks occur 

every year in the meningitis belt during the dry season. Last 

year, for example, the World Health Organisation reported 

more than 31,677 cases and 2,783 deaths in the meningitis 

belt. 

Meningitis is more than just a seasonal problem. In Africa, 

it targets our youngest year-round. Children under 5 years 

of age represent more than half of all the meningitis cases 

that occur outside epidemics. 

A recent spike in infections suggests the beginning of 

another large-scale epidemic. We are not defenseless. 

Using meningitis vaccines developed in the 1960s in a reactive 

immunisation campaign would save thousands of 

lives. This strategy, however, is not ideal. Emergency 

immunisations are expensive. -- just last year, Burkina Faso 

spent approximately US$3.5 million on a reactive 

vaccination campaign, one considered moderate in scale. 

Also the current vaccines do not protect babies. Even in 

adults, immunity wears off after a few years, leaving people 

vulnerable to the next epidemic. 

Africa needs a new strategy to defeat meningitis. Experts 

agree the best long-term solution is an improved vaccine 

that could be given to babies and protect them for life. In 

2000, the WHO formally called for a new vaccine that 

could be incorporated in routine child vaccination 

programmes. Routine immunisation would allow our public 

health officials to shift from crisis mode to sustainable, 

long-term prevention strategies. 

Scientists have risen to the challenge. They have developed 

a new class of vaccines that would protect our most 

vulnerable, our children. Modern vaccines are being tested 


around the world and they could be available here soon. 

One particularly promising candidate was submitted for 

approval to the European Medicines Agency this week 

and could be available as early as next year. Alongside 

expanded treatment and ongoing vaccination for older 

children and adults, this new tool will help break the 

meningitis epidemic cycle and put an end to costly lastminute 

vaccination campaigns. 

In addition to being the most advanced in its 

development, this particular candidate is also remarkable 

for being a combination vaccine. It would take public 

health in the meningitis belt to a new level by 

simultaneously protecting against other major diseases of 

great importance in Africa, like hepatitis B, tetanus, 

pertussis, diphtheria, and another form of meningitis, 

caused by the bacteria Haemophilus influenzae. 

Designed expressly for this region, this vaccine would 

simply replace the current combination vaccine. 

Clearly, we have to protect our children from more than 

one disease. It's similar to patching holes in a bucket – all 

holes should be patched at once instead of patching some 

and leaving others. 

Every Immunisation Day, mothers proudly line up at 

health clinics with their smiling babies. Even the mothers 

who leave with crying babies are glad they came, because 

they know that one jab is worth the priceless gift of 

health. In a few years, we could ensure that this one jab 

also includes meningitis, giving children fuller protection. 

There is no excuse for a delay. It is up to us to show that 

Africa can implement smart, long-term solutions based 

on innovative technology. It is up to us to build the 

necessary political will in the WHO and purchasing 

organisations, such as the Global Alliance for Vaccines 

and Immunisation. It is up to us to convince international 

bodies and our governments to budget for these new 

vaccines that can end this cycle once and for all. And it is 

up to us to gain the support of those who can deliver the 

vaccines on the ground, such as medical practitioners and 

Ministries of Health. 

We do not know when the next meningitis epidemic will 

hit. But, as we do our utmost to prepare for it, let us 

remember that there is another option over the long term. 

Next time, we do not just have to witness the devastation 

or lose friends and family to this disease. Let us instead 

honour them by changing course and raising our voices, 

since they can not. Let us start to make good on a new 

promise, a new tradition now emerging in Africa. 

Dr Hodgson is the Director of the Navrongo Health Research 

Centre, a part of Ghana's Ministry of Health. 


☻☻☻☻☻☻

Nigeria: Meningitis - FG 

Sues Pfizer $700bn 

Ise-Oluwa Ige 

5 June 2007 

Abuja — The Federal Government has sued the world 

largest pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, before a 

Federal high court sitting in Abuja for allegedly 

maiming or and killing in 1996, not fewer than 200 

children afflicted in Kano state by bacterial meningitis 

through alleged illegal experimentation of its products, 

Trovafloxacin Mesylate, (Trovan) on them. 

The government is asking the court to award 

$700billion damages against the pharmaceutical firm. 

If the damages is awarded, it is capable of closing down 

the operation of the pharmaceutical firm. 

In the writ of summons filed at the registry of the high 

court, nine other persons including the medical 

personnel that allegedly administered the Trovan on the 

victims for the purpose of testing the potency of the 

drug, were named as co-defendants. 

They include Pfizer Nigeria Limited, William Steere, 

Samuel Ohanbuwa, A Dogunro, Isa Dutse, Scott 

Hopkin, Mike Dunne, Debra Williams and Robert 

Buhl. 

But the management of the Pfizer International 

Incorporated has served a notice through its counsel, 

Chief Afe Babalola (SAN) that it would challenge the 

competence of the entire case and collapse the claim by 

the Federal Government. 

Chief Afe Babalola (SAN) who appeared personally in 

the case yesterday also requested for an accelerated 

hearing of the case. 

He particularly said in court yesterday that the damages 

being sought by the Federal Government was more 

than its annual budget and that it should not have any 

problem with the accelerated hearing of the case so that 

it could claim the sought damages. 

The trial high court judge, Justice Babs Kuewumi 

hearing the case has granted the request for accelerated 

hearing of the suit and has ordered the government to 

furnish the firm. all relevant papers in the matter. 

The matter is scheduled for mention on June 26, this 

year while full blown trial kicks off in July. 

The background of the case as captured by the 

statement of claim filed by the Federal Government 

was that on or about the month of April 1996, there was 

an epidemic of bacterial meningitis, measles and 

cholera in parts of Northern Nigeria particularly Kano State 

and some of the victims and/or patients were receiving 

medical attention at the Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH) 

through the joint efforts of the Federal Government of 

Nigeria and the Kano State Government of Nigeria. 

Government to combat and contain the epidemic were 

complemented by the humanitarian assistance and supplies 

donated by Non-governmental Organizations including 

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the Nobel Prize-winning 

humanitarian relief organization also known as "Doctors 

Without Borders". 

The epidemic was extremely ravaging and as such there 

was a limitation of space and resources which limitation led 

to MSF setting up its tent on the grounds of the IDH from 

where it attended to the patients and/or victims. 

The Federal Government contends that in the midst of the 

epidemic, Pfizer, acting by itself and through its agents, 

devised a scheme under which it misrepresented, concealed 

and failed to disclose its primary motive in seeking to 

participate in giving care to the victims of the epidemic in 

Kano. 

http://allafrica.com/stories /200706050032.html 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Early Symptoms of Meningitis 

• high fever 

• neck stiffness 

• rash 

• lethargy 

• vomiting 

• nausea 

• severe headache 

• sensitivity to light 

• Meningitis usually peaks in late winter and early 

spring, overlapping flu season, and symptoms can 

easily be mistaken for the flu. 

• Because the infection progresses quickly, people 

should seek medical care immediately if 2 or more 

of these symptoms occur at one time. 

• If untreated, meningitis can lead to shock and death 

within hours of the first symptoms. 

https://www.hvcc.edu/healthsvcs/meningitis.html 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 


Pfizer Blocks Prosecution 

By Mohammed Lawal Shuaibu. Abuja 

Daily Trust (Abuja) 

28 November 2007 

Pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, yesterday blocked the 

Federal Government from prosecuting it on criminal 

charges by obtaining an injunction restraining police 

from arraigning its officials. 

The Federal Government is instituting criminal charges 

against Pfizer before an Abuja Federal High Court for 

allegedly making Nigerian children "guinea pigs" for 

testing its meningitis drug in Kano in 1996. 

The government said the injunction is preventing it from 

prosecuting the multi-national company. 

Counsel representing the government said "the police 

could not bring Pfizer officials to court because the 

company got an injunction at a Lagos court restraining 

the police from bringing its officials to court for 

prosecution". 

"What Pfizer has done is what a former governor did to 

stop EFCC from prosecuting them. They went to Lagos 

State where there is no action pending to procure an 

exparte order to stop the police from taking steps to serve 

criminal summons on its officials. What the court has 

said is that police cannot arrest any of the defendants and 

bring them to court. And that is why none of them is in 

court," Mr Babatunde Irukera, one of the government 

counsel said. 

The government lead counsel, Mrs Mariam Uwais, asked 

the court for a date to enable the complainants time to 

convince the Lagos court to withdraw the exparte order 

restraining police from arresting the defendants so that 

they could bring Pfizer to court for prosecution. 

The presiding judge, Justice Anwuri Chikere, adjourned 

the case to January 28. 

Meanwhile the court has also adjourned the victims' 

application to be joined in the case to December 3 for 

parties to file their written addresses on arguments for 

and against the application. 

Pfizer is contesting that the move for application for 

victims to be joined in the case was illegal because the 

victims' families lacked representative capacity to be 

involved and that their application does not disclose 

sufficient interest in the subject matter to enable the court 

exercise jurisdiction. 

But the government said it would welcome anything that 

would hasten the process of justice for the drug victims. 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Re - Pfizer's Cold Blooded 

Logic 

Leadership (Abuja) 

OPINION 

31 October 2007 

By Ngozi Edozien 

Unfortunately, the numerous errors contained in your 

newspaper's report of 24 October, 2007 entitled Pfizer's 

Cold Blooded Logic make it necessary to set the record 

straight. 

First, the results of the 1996 clinical trial in Kano 

during the most serious cerebral spinal meningitis 

epidemic ever recorded in Nigeria plainly proved that 

Trovan helped save lives. 

Second, it is important to note that 99 children were 

treated with Trovaflosacin not 200 as you reported 

erroneously in your article. 

Third. the clinical investigation did not turn tragic. 

Instead it demonstrably saved more lives than any other 

treatment available in Kano at the time. The average 

mortality rate of those receiving treatment in Kano's 

hospital using other drugs was slightly more than one 

patient in every 10. Whereas, with Trovan, the 

mortality rate was around half that rate; of 99 patients 

who took Trovan, only five died from the meningitis 

they had contracted. 

Moreover, your anger at the tragedy of the meningitis 

epidemic that claimed 12, 000 or so young lives in the 

Kano region is misplaced. It was not any of the 

treatments that killed people in 1996; it was the disease. 

Left untreated the disease claims somewhere between 

30 to 40 per cent of its victims. 

Based on existing treatments, the intervention of 

science and professional care can reduce the mortality 

rate to around 10 per cent of those who contract 

meningitis. To date, no treatment has been developed 

that can save all who fall victim of this deadly disease. 

Yet, that objective of obtaining the highest possible 

survival rate in such epidemics is what Pfizer is in 

business to discover. and why it conducted a clinical 

trial in Kano in 1996 in the first place. 

You seem to have misunderstood what Pfizer is all 

about. The purpose of Pfizer, the focus of its business, 



Continued from page 27 – Pfizer’s Cold Blooded Logic 

is to develop safe medicines to prevent and treat the 

world's most serious diseases; making them available to 

the people who need them most. It is the pursuit of 

science that has enabled Pfizer over the last 150 years to 

make the world a healthier place for people to fulfill their 

potential. 

Our clinical investigation in Kano in 1996 was in the best 

tradition of Pfizer pursuing its purpose as a company. 

Meningitis is clearly a disease that limits people's 

potential to live full lives. Even today, in Kano, there can 

be no doubt that the stamp of meningitis still haunts it. 

Thousands of young people are maimed by varying 

degrees of hearing loss, mental retardation, paralysis, 

seizures and other debilitating symptoms associated with 

surviving this disease. In addition, the mourning of 

12,000 lost young lives obviously still weighs heavily on 

their parents, relatives, friends and communities. 

That said, Pfizer objects to the false accusations made by 

a columnist in LEADERSHIP speaking to those 

audiences. Others may also object to your columnist's 

strong remarks. 

Moreover, nothing could be further from the truth than 

your columnist's accusation that Pfizer sees developing 

nations as inferior and therefore, undeserving of respect 

and fundamental rights. Pfizer is a global company whose 

medicines are available worldwide to treat diseases that 

generally have no geographic boundaries and do not 

distinguish between rich and poor. Pfizer has been in 

Nigeria for 50 years. In that time, Pfizer has formed 

alliances with stakeholders of all sorts to improve 

people's ability to live healthy lives by preventing 

premature deaths, easing pain and arresting illnesses. 

In Nigeria, Pfizer continues to partner with others to 

educate the public on the risks and prevention of heart 

disease, breast cancer and other ailments. The company 

also works with the government to ensure that Nigeria is 

constantly improving its regulatory framework governing 

access to drugs, their pricing and ethical use. In the 

process, Pfizer has risked its reputation, shareholders' 

capital and won many allies among its many 

stakeholders. 

In other words, Pfizer takes and always has taken Nigeria 

seriously as a respected long-term business partner. 

Pfizer has always accepted that the suffering of the 

people of Kano was real. The devastation caused by 

meningitis in 1996 is still doing harm to the people of the 

region today. But by breaking the bonds of trust between 

companies that exist to bring life saving drugs to market 

and those who require them to combat disease and fulfill 

their potential, the columnist in LEADERSHIP commits 

his own errors. That's why we were obliged to respond. 

Ngozi Edozien is the Managing Director of Pfizer 

Specialties Nigeria 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Pfizer Asks Court to Quash 

FG's Meningitis Drug Test 

Report 

By Mohammed Lawal Shuaibu 

Daily Trust (Abuja) 


The families of children killed or maimed during a drug 

test in 1996 have appealed to an Abuja high court to be 

allowed to present their stories during the trial. 

But lawyers acting for pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer said 

the move was illegal because they lack representative 

capacity to be involved and their application does not 

disclose sufficient interest in the subject matter to enable 

the court exercise jurisdiction. 

The federal government said it would welcome anything 

that would hasten the process of justice for the drug 

victims. 

The presiding judge, Justice Anwuri Chikere, adjourned 

to October 29, for hearing. Pfizer yesterday asked the 

court to throw out the federal government's report which 

declared as illegal, its 1996 Kano meningitis drug test. 

The lawyer representing Pfizer, Mr Anthony I. Idigbe 

(SAN), said the application to quash the report before the 

court was on grounds that the panel did not carry out 

proper investigations on the issue before carrying out the 

report. 

A federal government panel headed by Dr Nasidi 

Abdussalam of the Federal Ministry of Health had 

reported in March 2001, that the Pfizer drug test was 

illegal and responsible for the death of over 11 Nigerians 

in Kano. 

But Pfizer says they were not given opportunity to crossexamine 

witnesses who gave evidence at the panel and 

that the report can not form the basis for the federal 

government's suit against the company. 

He said: "even the so called victims had sued the federal 

government on the drug issue until a kangaroo panel set 

up by the government forced them to withdraw the suit in 

2003." 



Continued from page 28 – Pfizer Asks Court to Quash FG 

Meningitis Drug Report 

But the federal government said it would come all out to 

challenge the multi-national drug company from 

quashing the report in court. Mr Babatunde Irukera, 

counsel to the government, said Pfizer is only afraid of 

anything that could prove the clinical test that killed 

many Nigerians in Kano illegal. 

"It is absurd for Pfizer to think of quashing the Nasidi 

report in court. The government will contest it because 

the report was carried out by professionals in health and 

pharmaceutical sectors. Their fear is that the report will 

expose their heinous act of using Nigerians as guinea 

pigs," he said. 

The counsel maintained the company is guilty of charges 

against it and insisted on prosecuting it until they are 

punished by the law for illegally testing the meningitis 

drug. 

Also, victims were in court yesterday to consolidate the 

suit against Pfizer but the company said the move was 

illegal because they lack representative capacity to be 

involved and that their application does not disclose 

sufficient interest in the subject matter to enable the court 

exercise jurisdiction. 

The federal government said it would welcome anything 

that would hasten the process of justice for the drug 

victims. The presiding judge, Justice Anwiri Chikeri 

adjourned to October 29 for hearing. 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Pfizer Official Appears in 

Court 

By Ibrahim Shuaibu, Kano 

This Day (Lagos) 

12 January 2008 

One of the three accused staff of Pfizer International 

Incorporated Nigeria, Segun Dogunro, appeared before a 

Kano High Court yesterday over a criminal case 

instituted by the Kano State government over an alleged 

illegal drug trial in 1996 by Pfizer, which killed many 

children. 

Dogunro was, however, granted bail to the tune of N5 

million. 

It would be recalled that presiding judge, Justice Shehu 

Atiku had issued a warrant of arrest on three officers of 

Pfizer for their failure to appear before it after receiving 

court summons on a criminal suit. 

Counsel to Pfizer, Damian Dodo (SAN), filed a motion for 

an acceleration hearing of the case and also pleaded for 

adjournment of the sitting to the next day to enable one of 

the defendants arrested by the court appear before it. 

The applicant, Barrister Aliyu Umar, who is also Kano 

State Attorney General, supported the motion, informing 

the court that he had been briefed by the police who said 

one of the bench warrant was successfully executed, adding 

that based on mutual understanding with his learned 

colleague, he supports the adjournment. 

Justice Shehu, after interrogating both counsels, adjourned 

the sitting to the next day to enable the arrested defendant 

appear before the court. Speaking with THISDAY shortly 

after the court session, the applicant, Umar, explained that 

he succumbed to the motion filed by his colleague for the 

accelerated sitting based on mutual understanding, said 

after the accelerated hearing of this motion, it means the 

court will go substantive hearing of the case. 

According to him, what the counsel to the defendant will 

present before the court tomorrow is an application because 

of the three people have been arrested. 

Barrister Umar hinted that the defendant counsel will file 

an application for bail which we will not oppose because 

our trial in not to punish anybody before the courts decides 

he is guilty or not. 

"They have assured us that the will bring the three accused 

persons before the court on 29th and we agreed until then 

because what we want is for the accused person to appear 

before the court in the cause of the trials'. 

They want an assurance from us and we have assured them 

that the suit was not to humiliate or get anybody 

imprisoned, adding that what Kano state government is 

trying to do it to prove to the world that some innocent 

children suffered damages and untold hardship. 

Kano state government filed civil and criminal suits against 

Pfizer in May, claiming $2.75 billion in compensation and 

prosecution of nine Pfizer staff for allegedly testing a 

meningitis drug called Trovan on 200 children in April 

1996 during a triple epidemic of measles, cholera and 

meningitis in which over 12,000 people died. 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Ananova: Meningitis Children 

'do worse' 

A quarter of teenagers who suffered meningitis as a child 

do not pass any GCSEs above grade C, accord-ing to a new 

study. 



Nigeria: Pfizer to Pay 

N11.2bn Compensation 

How Gowon, Carter Negotiated Out-of-Court 

Settlement 

Nuruddeen M. Abdallah 

1 March 2009 

Daily Trust 

Abuja — United States pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, 

may have finally agreed to release the sum of $75 

million (about N11.250 billion) as compensation over 

the 1996 Trovan drug test in Kano State, Sunday Trust 

can authoritatively report. 

The experiment left over 200 persons, mainly children, 

with deformities. Some have died. 

A source close to the company told Sunday Trust last 

night in a telephone interview that of the amount, $35 

million is going to be shared among the victims as 

compensation; $30 million will be paid to Kano State 

Government for the construction of modern hospitals; 

and the remaining $10 million will be paid to cover 

litigation expenses by government on behalf of the 

victims. 

This development, it was gathered, was the drug 

company's response to a proposal submitted to it in a 

meeting held last month in Abuja by the stakeholders' 

delegation that included the Kano State Attorney- 

General and Commissioner for Justice, Aliyu Umar, a 

representative of the victims' parents, Mustapha 

Maisikeli, Barrister Maryam Uwais, and the state 

Commissioner for Health, Hajiya Aisha Isiyaku Kiru, 

the former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (rtd) 

and former American President Jimmy Carter. 

The two former presidents have been brokering an outof-court 

resolution of the issue. It was gathered also 

that General Gowon has intimated Governor Ibrahim 

Shekarau about the giant company's acceptance of the 

proposal. The deal will be sealed in Rome in March this 

year. 

"The money would be finally released to us in March in 

Rome when we are going to meet with General Gowon 

and Pfizer's representatives to finalise the deal," a 

parent of a victim told this newspaper. 

According to him, it is only when the agreement is 

written and the money received that the stakeholders 

would withdraw both the civil and criminal suits 

pending against Pfizer. 

When Sunday Trust contacted the drug company over 

the issue, its spokesman Christopher Loder, said in a 

statement issued in New York that "the company does 

not believe it is appropriate to comment on the 

substance of its discussions with the governments at 

this time". 

"The Company has made and continued to make 

serious efforts to reach an appropriate and amicable 

resolution of the Nigerian federal and Kano state cases 

pertaining to Trovan. The settlement process is 

ongoing, and Pfizer is prepared to stay at the 

negotiating table until agreement are reached. We 

believe that settlement is in the best interest of all 

parties, and will avoid the continued cost and 

distraction of litigation, and can help improve and 

expand health care for the people of Nigeria," the 

statement said. 

This settlement follows months of negotiations between 

Pfizer and the Kano state government, representing the 

victims. The talks were brokered by General Gowon 

and US former president Jimmy Carter. 

It could be recalled that Kano State had filed civil and 

criminal suits against Pfizer, demanding $2.75 billion 

in compensation for what it said was an illegal test of 

the meningitis vaccine Trovan on 200 children in 1996. 

Eleven of those children are alleged to have died from 

the drug test which also caused deformities in 189 

others. A separate $6.5 billion suit has been lodged 

against the US drug firm by the Nigerian federal 

government. 

Pfizer has denied any wrong-doing and insisted that the 

trial conformed to ethical practices and was carried out 

with the consent of the Nigerian government, insisting 

that "the company has said all along that all clinical 

evidence points to the fact that any deaths or injuries 

were the direct result of the devastating meningitis 

epidemic, and not the treatment provided to patients in 

the Trovan clinical study. With a survival rate of 

94.4%, Trovan helped save lives and was at least as 

effective as the best treatment available at Kano's 

Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH). For patients who 

did not participate in the Trovan clinical study, the 

survival rate was slightly less than 90%," Pfizer 

insisted in a statement. 

A source closed to the victims told our reporter in 

confidence that it was not true the rumour going round 

that it was the government that pressurized them to 

accept the drug giant's proposal. The decision, he said, 

was borne out of sympathy with the victims and their 

parents, as some of them had already died of 

frustration. 



☻☻☻☻☻☻

WHO Predicts Worst 

Meningitis Epidemic for 

Decade 

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks 


Ouagadougou 

The end of the rainy season in Africa could trigger the 

worst meningitis epidemic to hit the continent in a 

decade, which the international community is poorly 

prepared to handle, the World Health Organization 

warned on 9 October. 

At least 80 million people living in 21 countries from 

Ethiopia in East Africa to Mauritania in West Africa that 

make up a region often called Africa's 'meningitis belt' 

might need to be injected with preventative vaccines this 

year, WHO said at an emergency meeting held in the 

Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou. 

Last year just 7 million doses of vaccines were available 

to the entire region because of funding shortfalls and a 

global deficit in the production of the cheaper vaccines 

usually used in Africa as European drug manufacturers 

have focused on producing newer, long-lasting but more 

expensive vaccines. 

The meningitis virus, which usually reaches epidemic 

levels in the meningitis belt between December and May, 

could be especially severe this year as the region is 

heading toward the peak of a 10- to 12-year cycle of 

meningitis crises, health forecasters say. 

"The number of cases has increased in the last two 

seasons and we are likely to have major epidemics in a 

context of vaccine shortages," Dr Deo Nshimirimana, 

Director of the Communicable Disease Control 

Department at WHO Africa office told IRIN. "We need 

to educate everybody so that we can be prepared in case 

of an epidemic." 

An estimated total population of between 300 million and 

400 million people live in the meningitis belt countries, 

the vast majority of them in isolated, rural areas, often far 

from roads or health centres. Between 1995 and 1997, the 

last time there was a major epidemic in the region, at 

least 25,000 people died and 250,000 people were 

infected. 

From December to May last year 53,000 cases of 

meningitis were reported and an estimated 4,000 people 

died across the region. 

The countries affected are mostly extremely poor and 

have desperately under-resourced health systems. In 

many of the countries, governments rely on foreign 

donors to prop up basic health infrastructure even when 

there is not a crisis. 

WHO has asked donors to provide US$14 million to 

purchase 12 million doses of vaccine and injection 

materials, and to cover transport, storage and insurance 

costs. WHO also wants to strengthen surveillance and 

diagnosis capacities in the region, which includes several 

of the poorest countries in the world. 

"The partners have been receptive to our appeal and to 

the stakes," Nshimirimana said. "They have agreed to 

lobby at their headquarters." 

The 12 million doses - a minimum, according to WHO - 

will be pre-positioned for response in case of epidemics. 

Additionally, WHO wants to set up a security stock of 

500,000 vaccine doses in each of the countries of the 

meningitis belt. 

"I think this meeting is very important because the 

budgets of African countries mean left alone they cannot 

support the fight against meningitis," Burkina Faso's 

health minister Alain Yoda said at the opening of the 

WHO meeting. Burkina Faso, where nearly 26,000 cases 

of meningitis were recorded last year and 1,732 people 

died, needs six million doses, Yoda said. 

Semi-arid Sahelian countries are hit each year by 

outbreaks of meningitis during the dry seasons between 

December and June when strong, dust-laden winds and 

cold nights make people more prone to respiratory 

infections. The meningitis bacteria is transmitted by 

sneezing or coughing. 

Meningitis is an infection of the thin lining around the 

brain and spinal cord. Even when meningitis is diagnosed 

early and adequate therapy is available, between 5 and 10 

percent of patients die, typically within 24 and 48 hours 

of experiencing the first symptoms. Many thousands of 

survivors live on with brain damage, hearing loss, or 

learning disabilities. 

UN agencies and non-governmental organisations at 

the Ouagadougou meeting included the UN 

children's fund, the European Commission 

Humanitarian Aid Office, USAID, Medecins Sans 

Frontiers, the World Bank and the US Centers for 

Disease Control and Prevention. 

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of 

the United Nations] 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 


Continued on page 29 –Ananova: Meningitis Children do 

worst 

That figure is around four times the national average, 

with almost 2% of the general school population in 

England attending special schools. 

Almost half of the teenagers who had had meningitis and 

went to state schools failed to achieve five grade C GCSE 

passes. 

That rate was twice as high as among children at the 

same type of school who had not been affected by 

meningitis. 

More than a fifth of those who had been ill failed to pass 

even one GCSE at grade C, compared with 8% of the 

(unaffected) comparison group and the national average 

in England of less than 4%. 

Even pupils who showed no signs of disability associated 

with meningitis aged five were half as likely to achieve 

the national standard as other children. The national 

"yardstick" for pupils is to pass five subjects at grade C or 

above. 

The study was based on the GCSE exam results of 750 

16-year-olds in England and Wales, of whom 461 had 

had bacterial meningitis during their first year of life. 

It is due to be published in the journal Archives of 

Disease in Childhood. 

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2252763.html?menu= 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

1 Million Doses of Meningitis 

Shot Recalled 

Tests showed a sterilization problem at plant that 

makes Hib vaccine 

The Associated Press 

December 12, 2007 

ATLANTA - More than a million doses of a common 

vaccine given to babies as young as 2 months were being 

recalled Wednesday because of contamination risks, but 

the top U.S. health official said it was not a health threat. 

A shortage of the widely used vaccine appeared possible, 

though. 

The recall is for 1.2 million doses of the vaccine for Hib, 

which protects against meningitis, pneumonia and other 

serious infections, and a combination vaccine for Hib and 

hepatitis B. The vaccine is recommended for all children 

under 5 and is usually given in a three-shot series, 

starting at 2 months old. 

Drugmaker Merck & Co., which announced the recall 

after this week identifying a sterility problem in a 

Pennsylvania factory, said concerned parents should 

contact their child’s doctor. 

“The potential for contamination of any individual vaccine 

is low,” said Merck spokeswoman Kelley Dougherty. 

’Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease 

Control and Prevention, echoed that in a news conference. 

“This is not a health threat in the short run, but it is an 

inconvenience,” she said. 

Merck produces about half of the nation’s annual supply of 

14 million doses of Hib vaccine. It said sample vials from 

the recalled lots, tested before shipment, were not found to 

be contaminated but the company was unable to assure 

sterility of the entire lots. 

Shortage ‘likely’ 

Barbara Kuter, executive director of pediatric medical 

affairs for Merck, told The Associated Press that because of 

the contamination, the company will not be able to supply 

any vaccine for at least nine months. 

“Manufacture of vaccines is pretty complicated, and we 

have to basically make some changes in the process,” then 

get approval from the Food and Drug Administration before 

resuming production and shipments, Kuter said. Merck 

hopes to restart production in the fourth quarter of 2008, 

she said. 

“It’s likely that there’s going to be a shortage of this 

product,” Kuter said, adding that the impact on the public is 

unclear because the other company making the vaccine for 

the U.S., Sanofi Pasteur, may be able to produce more. 

However, Sanofi Pasteur spokeswoman Donna Cary said 

Wednesday night that it was too soon to say whether that is 

possible. The company, a unit of Paris-based drugmaker 

Sanofi-Aventis SA, makes an Hib vaccine in France that is 

distributed both to the U.S. and other countries. 

“We’re looking at what we can add and we’re working 

closely with the CDC on this,” to see whether some vaccine 

could be shifted to the U.S. from other countries, Cary said. 

Health officials said they already are talking about 

prioritizing shots for American Indian and Alaska Native 

children, who are considered at higher risk for Hib-caused 

illnesses, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s 

National Center for Immunization and Respiratory 

Diseases. 

No reported harm to children 

The officials said they did not know how many of the 1.2 

million doses were administered to children. 

The recalled doses, which were distributed beginning in 

April, are considered potent, so children who got vaccine 



Continued from page 32 – 1 Million Doses of Meningitis 

Shot Recalled 

from the recalled lots will not have to be revaccinated, 

Schuchat said. 

Parents will probably be concerned, CDC officials 

acknowledged. Should the vaccine later prove 

contaminated, health officials believe most children 

will experience, at worst, a skin irritation around the 

vaccination site. Problems could be worse for children 

with compromised immune systems. 

Such problems would have appeared within one week 

of the vaccination, Schuchat said, adding that there 

have been no reports suggesting vaccine contamination 

so far. 

The contamination involved unspecified equipment 

used in making the vaccine, which involves taking part 

of the Hib bacterium, diluting it and combining it with 

other agents. Kuter said that during a routine evaluation 

of Merck’s West Point, Pa., vaccine plant, a sterility 

test determined that the equipment was contaminated 

with a bacteria called Bacillus cereus, or B. cereus. 

It is a spore-making microorganism commonly 

associated with food poisoning and has caused diarrhea 

and vomiting in people who eat contaminated foods. 

“It’s one of the most common organisms” around, 

Kuter said. 

The recall is likely to heighten a debate over childhood 

vaccines and their safety and whether too many are 

required. Some parents are distrustful and suspect some 

vaccines of being linked to autism, although scientific 

studies have not shown such a connection. 

This week, New Jersey took a controversial step toward 

becoming the first state to require flu shots for 

preschoolers after a health advisory board backed new 

vaccine requirements over opposition from parents. 

Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., is one of the 

few drugmakers that produces a significant number of 

vaccines. Its representatives could not immediately say 

how much revenue the company gets from the Hib 

vaccine or whether it will have to take an accounting 

charge due to the production shutdown. 

While the company took a black eye with its September 

2004 withdrawal of the painkiller Vioxx due to 

increased risk of heart attacks and strokes, the company 

has been performing well recently. On Tuesday, it gave 

an upbeat assessment in its annual briefing for analysts. 

Five weeks ago, Merck reached a deal to settle up to 

50,000 Vioxx lawsuits for $4.85 billion, an amount 

expected to save the company millions in trial costs. 

Its stock price has more than recovered from its post- 

Vioxx slump, a two-year-old restructuring plan is going 

well and profits are up. For example, Merck posted a 

62 percent increase in its third-quarter profit as 

revenues jumped by double digits. 

The company also has had an impressive seven new 

products approved for U.S. sale in the last two years, 

including three vaccines: RotaTeq, to revent an 

intestinal virus that is the top cause of early childhood 

diarrhea; Zostavax to prevent shingles, and Gardasil, to 

block the virus that causes cervical cancer. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22221666/ 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Uganda: Mass Immunisation 

Returns As Polio Attacks 

Again 

Diana Nabiruma 

12 March 2009 

The Weekly Observer 

Although the World Health Organisation declared 

Uganda Polio free in 2006, new cases of the crippling 

disease have been reported in the northern part of the 

country. 

The disease is suspected to have spread to Uganda from 

the Sudan. As of February 6, 2009, 11 people in Sudan 

were reported to have Polio. However in Uganda, only 

one case has so far been reported in Amuru district. 

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative website reports 

that previously restricted to Southern Sudan and 

Western Ethiopia, the Polio outbreak has since spread 

to Northern Kenya, Northern Uganda, as well as 

Northern Sudan. To counteract this menace, the 

Ministry of Health announced a campaign to immunise 

all children below five years against Polio from 

February 9-15. 

According to Joseph Wamala, an epidemiologist with 

the Ministry of Health, it is yet to be determined how 

many people responded to the call to get all children of 

less than five years immunised during the campaign. 

Mass immunisation campaigns have previously been 

undermined by ignorance and misinformation, often 

leading to low turn up. In some cases, parents are made 

to believe that the drug is intended to kill or disable 

their children. A few years ago, Muslims in Northern 

Nigeria refused to immunise their children against 

Polio after it was rumoured that the vaccine was 

actually a contraceptive that would make their children 

sterile. Continued on page 34 


Continued from page 33–Mass Immunizations Returns as 

Polio Attacks Again 

Indeed as of February 6, 2009, Nigeria had reported 42 

Polio cases since the year began, the highest in the world. 

An estimated 801 Nigerians had Polio in 2008, still the 

highest in the world. 

Joseph Wamala explains that when you discover one 

Polio case, it implies that there about 100-200 more. All 

children that come into contact with this one case are at a 

risk of catching the disease. That is what makes 

immunisation so critical. 

How it spreads 

Polio is a viral disease which may affect the spinal cord, 

causing muscle weakness and paralysis. It spreads 

through the fecal-oral route. Poor disposal of fecal matter 

may result in uninfected people carrying the virus on 

them, say on their hands. Failure to wash hands well 

results in introduction of the virus into the body through 

the mouth where it could incubate for 3-35 days before it 

manifests itself. The incubation period though is usually 

between 7-14 days. 

Symptoms depend on the type of Polio one has. There is 

a type that causes no symptoms, though it is infectious. 

The abortive type causes symptoms like fever, headache, 

stiff neck and muscle pain. These two types of Polio do 

not lead to paralysis, though when another person gets 

infected by the same virus, they could get paralysed. The 

third type of Polio is the paralytic type. 1-2% of those 

infected get this type. 

There is no cure for Polio but it can be prevented through 

vaccination of children before they turn one. Four doses 

are administered, with the first one being given at birth, 

then at six weeks, 10 weeks and finally at 14 weeks. 

However, when there is an outbreak, all children below 

five are re-immunised. 

According to Ministry of Health officials, another round 

of immunsation will take place in Uganda from March 

20- 23. 

Children are more susceptible to catching Polio because 

they have weaker immune systems. People suffering from 

Polio can only be supported using painkillers, 

physiotherapy, and use of wheelchairs when needed. 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Uganda: Polio Blamed on 

Juba Traders 

30 March 2009 

New Vision 

Stella Naigino 


Kampala — UGANDAN traders operating in Juba and 

Congo have been accused of bringing back polio into 

the country. 

"The disease is believed to have been brought into 

Uganda by those who carry out business from Juba and 

Congo. We have detected a case in northern Uganda," 

the World Health Organisation representative, Dr. 

Joaquim Seweka, said. 

"People affected by this disease are viewed as people 

who cannot perform and many are left without 

employment, which hinders the growth of a country 

because funds are diverted to cater for polio victims," 

he said. 

Seweka made the remarks during a polio immunisation 

campaign launched by Kampala City Council at Kiswa 

Health Centre. 

The drive was funded by the Infectious Disease 

Institution, the World Health Organisation and the 

Government. 

About 90% of children are expected to be immunised 

against the disease. 

The KCC environment and tourism city chief, Doreen 

Naakatya, said all children in Kampala district would 

be immunised against polio. 

LC1 chairpersons, she said, had been urged to register 

children below the age of five for immunisation. 

Polio is a highly contagious illness spread through 

contact with the faeces of an infected person. 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Kenya: Millions of Children 

Targeted in Stop-Polio 

Campaign 

25 March 2009 

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks 

Nairobi — A five-day anti-polio campaign, targeting 

more than two million children in 42 districts, has been 

largely successful, officials said on 25 March, the last 

day of the house-to-house immunization project. 

"The response has been good and we are likely to reach 

95 percent of the targeted children - those aged between 

0 and 59 months," Josephine Odanga, the 

health/emergency officer for the UN Children's Fund 

(UNICEF Kenya), told IRIN on 25 March. 

She said the campaign was an emergency response to a 


Continued from page 34 –Kenya: Millions of Children 

Targeted in Stop-Polio Campaign 

threat posed by two cases of the wild polio virus type 1 

detected in February in Turkana district, northern Kenya, 

which were genetically linked to the virus circulating in 

neighbouring South Sudan. 

Those cases followed two others three years ago, at a 

refugee camp in North Eastern Province, also confirmed 

to have been linked to a virus circulating in neighbouring 

Somalia. 

Odanga said: "With this campaign, we hope to create 

'herd immunity', that is, reach at least 95 percent of the 

targeted children in order to develop an immune response 

in the targeted children." 

All districts in Central and Nairobi provinces, as well as 

selected districts in Rift Valley, were covered in the 

campaign, undertaken by the Ministry of Public Health 

and Sanitation, with UNICEF and the World Health 

Organization (WHO). 

Odanga said routine polio vaccination, carried out in 

health facilities, targets types 1, 2 and 3 - but this houseto-house 

campaign involved the monovalent vaccine, 

targeting only polio type 1, as identified by the Kenya 

Medical Research (KEMRI) laboratory. 

Miriti M'Ibui, the Nairobi provincial disease surveillance 

officer, told IRIN the stop-polio campaign was 

undertaken following a risk analysis by the Ministry of 

Public Health and Sanitation, with WHO and UNICEF, 

which found that 42 districts across the country were at 

high risk of the wild polio virus. 

"All the three districts of Nairobi were found to be highrisk 

areas and we are targeting at least half a million 

children [there]," M'Ibui said. "For the vaccine to be 

effective, we need to capture not less than 95 percent of 

the targeted children; by yesterday [24 March] our 

coverage was more than 80 percent, we hope to meet our 

target by the end of the campaign today." 

Health experts say there is now a real threat of circulation 

of the wild polio in the country 

He said the process of moving house-to-house was slow 

but necessary to ensure comprehensive coverage. 

"The high-rise buildings in parts of Nairobi slow the 

process further as every house has to be covered ... but 

the health teams are working hard to immunize as many 

children as possible," M'Ibui said. 

According to UNICEF, Kenya presented its 

documentation on polio certification to the Africa 

Regional Certification committee in 2005 and was in the 

process of being certified polio-free by WHO. 

"Health experts say there is now a real threat of 

circulation of the wild polio in the country," UNICEF 

said in a statement. "The government, supported by 

WHO and UNICEF, have moved swiftly to stop the 

spread of the viral disease which causes paralysis and 

has no cure." 

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of 

the United Nations] 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Tanzania: Polio at Arusha's 

Doorstep 

21 March 2009 

Arusha Times 

Arusha — The Rotary Club of Moshi, which this year 

celebrates 50 years of reaching out to humanity, last 

Sunday organized a fund raising event to help eliminate 

polio, a crippling disease. 

The venue of the well attended event was the Mountain 

View Inn made available by Rotarian Harshit while 

new Rotarians Bijal and Bejay did all the organizing. 

This dreaded disease, which suddenly reappeared in 

Kenya last month, does not discriminate. President 

Roosevelt of USA and from one of the richest families 

in the world was a victim. 

Launched in 1985, after 23 years of Rotarians efforts, 

polio has decreased from 350,000 cases a year to less 

than 1000 cases last year. Last month the Rotary 

Foundation sent US$75,000 to the Kenyan government 

to immediately control the spread of the disease. 

The Chairman of Lions Club Moshi and members came 

together in an l effort to enjoy fellowship with 

Rotarians and donated generously to help the protection 

of children worldwide from the cruel and fatal 

consequences of Polio. 

The highest price paid in the auction was 900,000/- by 

Mustafa Panju of Bushbuck Safaris for a beautiful 

leather giraffe, made by polio victims at Shah 

Industries, Moshi and presented by Lion Himat Shah. 


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West Africa: Massive UN- 

Backed Polio Immunization 

Campaign Underway in West 

Africa 


UN News Service 

Some 53 million children under the age of five, 

including every girl and boy in Nigeria, have been 

targeted by a mass polio immunization campaign across 

West Africa, the United Nations Children's Fund 

(UNICEF) announced today. 

The door-to-door polio eradication drive is planned to 

sweep through eight countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, 

Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Togo, and Nigeria, 

aiming to reach every child even in the remotest of 

areas. 

The campaign, employing 162,000 trained immunizers, 

will attempt to stop last year's outbreak which hit 

northern Nigeria and spread to six countries in West 

Africa after the wild polio virus had already re-infected 

Niger in 2007, as well as Chad and Cameroon in 

Central Africa. 

"The highest priority was to reach every child in 

Nigeria, which was one of the four endemic countries, 

and in the high-risk areas across the region," said 

Miranda Eeles, a spokesperson for UNICEF. 

The total cost of the campaign is $29 million for the 

seven countries, with an additional $38 million for 

Nigeria, including the cost of the vaccine, operational 

costs, social mobilization and surveillance. 

The campaign, which kicked off today and started 

earlier this month in Ghana, involves the health 

ministries of all the countries, as well as support from 

UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and 

Rotary International, among others. It is being 

organized as part of the Global Polio Eradication 

Initiative. 

Contracted through contaminated food, water and 

faeces, polio is a highly infectious and incurable viral 

disease, which mainly affects children under five, 

attacking the nervous system. One in 200 infections 

leads to irreversible paralysis, usually in the legs, and 

among those paralyzed, five to 10 per cent die when 

their respiratory muscles become immobilized. 


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Africa: International Body 

Launches Appeal for Polio- 

Affected Countries 

12 April 2009 

Daily Trust 

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red 

Crescent Societies (IFRC) has launched an emergency 

appeal for fund to help 14 African countries respond to 

wild polio virus outbreaks. 

"We have clear indications that polio is spreading again, 

including in countries such as Uganda which had been 

polio-free for more than a decade," Dr Tammam Aloudat, 

IFRC seni The UN correspondent of the News Agency of 

Nigeria (NAN) reports that the statement was released in 

Geneva, and made available to reporters at the UN 

headquarters on Friday. 

The statement said the international body was hoping to 

raise 2.1 million dollars in funding for such intervention. 

Aloudat stated: "We need to act now by reinforcing 

emergency vaccination campaigns before efforts made 

over the last 20 years to eradicate polio are severely set 

back by these series of outbreaks". 

IFRC had reported that polio cases surged again last year 

in Nigeria, and that that had re-infected surrounding 

countries in West Africa. 

In addition, it said that an outbreak of polio which was 

previously restricted to southern Sudan and western 

Ethiopia had recently spread to Kenya, Uganda and 

northern Sudan. 

The Red Cross also noted that "persistent outbreaks of 

wild polio virus are also ongoing in Angola, Chad and the 

Democratic Republic of Congo, and threatening 

surrounding countries". 

NAN learnt that activities related to the IFRC appeal will 

support social mobilisation for the massive immunization 

campaigns currently taking place or planned in all 

affected countries. 

Funds raised by the Geneva-based organisation will 

reinforce the training and mobilisation of thousands of 

volunteers throughout the continent to ensure that as 

many children as possible can be reached for vaccination. 

"These outbreaks in the previously polio-free countries 

come as a sad reminder to the same international 

community that the fight against polio is not over yet," 

Kate Elder, IFRC senior health officer in charge of polio 

and measles, also said. 


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Nigeria: Country Gets $630 

Million Polio Fund from 

Gates Foundation 

Nwakpa O. Nwakpa 

23 January 2009 

Leadership 

Abuja — A huge sum of $630 million has been donated 

by Bill Gates through the Bill and Melinda Gates 

Foundation in conjunction with Rotary International 

and the British and German governments to fight polio 

in Nigeria, with the hope of finally bringing the disease 

under control in its last four bastions.Other countries to 

benefit from the donation are India, Pakistan and 

Afghanistan where this disease is still endemic 

Gates, addressing a Rotary conference in San Diego, 

acknowledged that mobilising armies of health workers 

to squeeze billions of doses of vaccine each year into 

the mouths of hundreds of millions of children could 

not go on indefinitely, even as he voiced confidence 

that polio would ultimately be vanquished. 

Eradicating a disease is hard, slow, painstaking work," 

he said. "We can't circle a year on the calendar and say 

we'll end polio by this date or that date. That sets us up 

for failure." 

Nigeria's flawed effort has most disheartened 

international public health officials. Almost half the 

1,625 polio cases counted internationally last year 

occurred in that one nation. And the disease has spread 

from Nigeria to adjacent countries. 

"They're harming their neighbours by repeatedly 

bombarding them with polio virus," said Dr. Stephen 

Cochi, a senior adviser in the global immunisation 

division of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and 

Prevention. "These very poor neighbours have driven 

out the virus only to be reinfected by Nigerian polio 

virus." 

Northern states in Nigeria halted the vaccination 

campaign for a year in 2003-2004 after the spread of 

rumors that the vaccine contained AIDS or a Western 

plot to sterilise Muslim girls. But even after the country 

rededicated itself to the campaign in late 2004, its 

performance has been weak, public health officials say. 


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Nigeria: UNICEF Gets N940m 

to Combat Malaria, Polio 

Onwuka Nzeshi 

24 June 2008 

This Day 

Abuja — The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) 

has obtained a grant of N940 million ($8 million) in 

support of child survival programmes in Nigeria. 

This is in a bid to save the Nigerian child from avoidable 

childhood diseases and death. The contribution, which 

came courtesy of the Japanese government is to be 

directed towards polio eradication, malaria prevention 

and routine immunisation. 

The donation is coming on the heels of a resolution by 

Nigeria and her neighbour, Republic of Niger to 

collaborate in the task of eradicating polio completely 

from both countries. 

Under the new pact, both countries are expected to set up 

task forces to work within their respective territories and 

a joint technical committee to oversee the entire project. 

Available statistics indicate that one out of every five 

Nigerian children will die before their fifth birthday, with 

malaria alone being responsible for one quarter of these 

deaths. 

Also vaccine preventable diseases such as measles, 

tetanus and diphtheria claim the lives of many children 

under the age of five. Nigeria also remains one of the 

only four countries in the world that has not yet 

interrupted indigenous wild polio virus transmission, and 

accounts for 92 per cent of the cases in Africa currently. 

UNICEF Country Representative in Nigeria Dr. Robert 

Limlim, at a ceremony to seal the humanitarian deal, said 

the donation was demonstration of the renewed 

commitment of the Japanese government to child survival 

in Nigeria. 

The gesture, Limlim said, came at an appropriate time 

given the current resurgence of wild polio virus in 

Nigeria and the fight to interrupt its transmission this 

year. 

He said the grant will also boost Nigeria's efforts towards 

achieving the health-related Millennium Development 

Goals by 2015. 

In specific terms, the grant will be used for the 

procurement of polio vaccines, child survival supplies 

such as Oral Rehydration Sachets, deworming tablets for 

children aged 1 to 5 years and also drugs for malaria 

prevention in pregnant women. Continued on page 38 


Continued from page 37 – Nigeria: UNICEF Gets N940m 

Child Obesity Linked to Chemicals 

In addition, 159,300 Long Lasting Insecticide Nets 

(LLIN) will be procured for malaria control. This will 

complement the 521,500 nets already procured in the 

last two years with funding from the Government of 

Japan. 

These nets are expected to be distributed to the most 

deprived and hard to reach families in communities, as 

well as pregnant women attending ante-natal care and 

children who will have completed their scheduled 

vaccinations as an incentive to boost immunisation. 

Since 2000, Japan has contributed about N5 billion 

($44.24 million) for the prevention of infectious 

diseases in Nigeria through UNICEF/Federal 

Government of Nigeria Programme of Cooperation. 

The Japanese Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Toshitsugu 

Uesawa, expressed hope that this project will enhance 

the welfare of Nigerian children and boost bilateral 

relationship between Nigeria and Japan. 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Nigeria: 50 Million Dollar 

Loan for Polio? 


Daily Trust, Editorial 

Many Nigerians were aghast to hear of the Federal 

Government's plan to secure a 50 million dollar World 

Bank loan to fight polio. 

This, coming soon after American billionaire Bill 

Gates' 75 million dollar donation to fight the same 

child-hood disease, smirks of a misplacement of 

priorities. Is funding the main problem facing the fight 

against polio in Nigeria? It can't be. Right now there is 

enough funding coming in from the US government, 

from the United Kingdom, the European Union and 

other donor agencies for the specific aim of polio 

eradication. 

Government officials were quick to say that the loan 

was interest-free so there is no danger in taking it. After 

our hard-won liberation from the London and Paris 

Club of creditors, it is only natural for Nigerians to be 

wary of international debt, regardless of the soft 

conditions. In any case, a project that is so severallyfunded 

by international donors can not justify any kind 

of loan. What the campaign against polio in Nigeria 

desperately needs, is a measure to encourage full 

acceptance by the Nigerian populace. 

Until a few years ago, when allegations of contaminants 

in the vaccines led to a heated national controversy on the 

safety or even desirability of the vaccination, Nigerians 

have never shown aversion to immunization programmes. 

Indeed killer-diseases like whooping cough and small 

pox were all eradicated from the country through those 

mass immunization programmes of three to four decades 

ago. With well-planned media campaigns that included 

cinema shows in schools and village squares, people were 

mobilized to come forward and have themselves 

immunized against the diseases, with great results. 

Most people over the age of thirty bear the marks of those 

routine immunizations which were held regularly to fight 

those childhood killer diseases. Today, according to 

World Health Organisation statistics, Nigeria is among 

the four countries in the world which are yet to eradicate 

the polio virus and the only one with the three different 

strands of the disease all in existence here. In his 

interview with Daily Trust, Bill Gates claimed that polio 

has already been eradicated in the South, it is in the North 

that the disease still exists. If all the three claims above 

are true, for international statistics are sometimes 

misleading, then government must re-strategise to 

eradicate polio in the North. 

As noted above, decades ago immunization exercises 

were successful because the people in the North 

subscribed to them without question, something had to 

have gone wrong for them to develop this recent apathy. 

In the last two decades, a vigorous family planning 

campaign was embarked upon by both government 

agencies and non-governmental organizations. The 

campaign was obviously targeted at the North, whose 

polygamous practices and extended family structures 

favour large families. They also frown on any attempt to 

impose birth control because it is against certain tenets of 

Islamic religion, which most Northerners profess. 

The fact that a renewed emphasis on immunization, 

which came complete with fanfare, came high on the 

heels of this aggressive birth control drive must have 

provided fertile grounds for conspiracy theorists to say 

that the vaccines were being used to sterilize infants. This 

will, of course, make the task of population control easier 

for the advanced countries which wish to impose it on us. 

These conspiracy theorists won the day, thanks mainly to 

the fact certain contaminated vaccines were indeed found 

and confirmed to be so by some Nigerian scientists. 


Daily Trust believes that the way to fight this apathy to 

polio immunization, is to first of all address these fears. A 

vigorous media campaign through jingles, drama and talk 

shows should seek to dispel any notion that polio 

vaccines can make children sterile. Special care should be 

taken to store the vaccines properly, as this will prevent 


Continued from page 38 - Nigeria: 50M Dollar Loan for 

Polio 

premature expiration of batches, a fact which might 

have caused the contaminants detected in 2003. 

Additionally, any complaints of adverse reaction, after 

the vaccine, should be taken seriously and investigated, 

as failure to do so can give rise to speculations that the 

vaccines are harmful. This, rather than the haste to take 

a 50 million dollar World Bank loan, is what will 

ensure a speedy eradication of polio in Nigeria. 


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UNICEF Nigerian Polio 

Vaccine Contaminated with 

Sterilizing Agents - Scientist 

Finds 

Scientist says things discovered in vaccines are 

"harmful, toxic" 

KADUNA, Nigeria, March 11, 2004 

(LifeSiteNews.com) - A UNICEF campaign to 

vaccinate Nigeria's youth against polio may have been 

a front for sterilizing the nation. Dr. Haruna Kaita, a 

pharmaceutical scientist and Dean of the Faculty of 

Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ahmadu Bello University 

in Zaria, took samples of the vaccine to labs in India for 

analysis. 

Using WHO-recommended technologies like Gas 

Chromatography (GC) and Radio-Immuno assay, Dr. 

Kaita, upon analysis, found evidence of serious 

contamination. "Some of the things we discovered in 

the vaccines are harmful, toxic; some have direct 

effects on the human reproductive system," he said in 

an interview with Kaduna's Weekly Trust. "I and some 

other professional colleagues who are Indians who 

were in the Lab could not believe the discovery," he 

said. 

A Nigerian government doctor tried to persuade Dr. 

Kaita that the contaminants would have no bearing on 

human reproduction. "…I was surprised when one of 

the federal government doctors was telling me 

something contrary to what I have learned, studied, 

taught and is the common knowledge of all 

pharmaceutical scientists -- that estrogen cannot induce 

an anti-fertility response in humans," he said. "I found 

that argument very disturbing and ridiculous." 

When asked by the Trust why Dr. Kaita felt the drug 

manufacturers would have contaminated the Oral Polio 

Vaccine, he gave three reasons: "These manufacturers or 

promoters of these harmful things have a secret agenda 

which only further research can reveal. Secondly they 

have always taken us in the third world for granted, 

thinking we don't have the capacity, knowledge and 

equipment to conduct tests that would reveal such 

contaminants. And very unfortunately they also have 

people to defend their atrocities within our mist, and 

worst still some of these are supposed to be our own 

professionals who we rely on to protect our interests." 

Dr. Kaita is demanding that "those who imported this 

fake drug in the name of Polio Vaccines…be prosecuted 

like any other criminal." 

The campaign to rid Nigeria of polio is in its fourth year. 

Officials there claim that all contaminated vaccines have 

been exhausted and replaced by uncontaminated batches. 

In a rhetorical conclusion to the interview, Dr. Kaita 

asked "What plans has the government put in place to 

help children who have been given these toxic and 

contaminated vaccines in case they start reacting to 

them?" 

This is not the first time UNICEF has been embroiled in a 

controversy over sterilizing agents in vaccines. 

LifeSiteNews.com reported that in 1995, the Catholic 

Women's League of the Philippines won a court order 

halting a UNICEF anti-tetanus program because the 

vaccine had been laced with B-hCG, which when given 

in a vaccine permanently causes women to be unable to 

sustain a pregnancy. The Supreme Court of the 

Philippines found the surreptitious sterilization program 

had already vaccinated three million women, aged 12 to 

45. B-hCG-laced vaccine was also found in at least four 

other developing countries. 

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/mar/04031101.html 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Polio made from Scratch 

First ever virus synthesized from chemicals alone. 

Tom Clarke 

12 July 2002 

Using genetic code as the recipe and carbon-containing 

chemicals as ingredients, researchers have made infective 

poliovirus entirely from scratch. This is the first time that 

a working biological entity has been made using 

chemistry alone. 

The team behind the achievement, claim that it 

demonstrates the risk of further viruses being created 

from just their genetic code- by bioterrorists, for example. 

Continue on page 50 





Vaccine Induced Polio - Ugandan Kids Die By 1,000s 

A Transcript of a talk given by Kihura Nkuba at the National Vaccine Information Center's 

Third International Public Conference on Vaccination November 7- 9, 2002 - Arlington, 

Virginia, aired on C-Span 2 on November 7, 2002. 

INTRODUCTION by Barbara L. Fisher: 

We're now going to look at oral polio vaccination 

conducted in Africa. Our next speaker, known in the 

pan-African world as Kihura Nkuba, which means "one 

who handcuffs lightning and puts thunder in jail", is 

founder of Greater African Radio and president of the 

East African World Broadcasters Association, and 

director of the Pan-African Center for Strategic and 

International Studies. Several years ago he began 

hearing from villagers who were being subjected to 

repeated forced live oral polio vaccinations despite 

reports of injuries and death among the children. On his 

radio program he began to speak out and questioned the 

safety of giving the children - especially children with 

HIV - so many live oral polio vaccinations, rather than 

giving them the safer "killed" polio vaccine used in the 

U.S. and Canada. Since that time, he tells me, he has 

been persecuted by the government, World Health 

Organization and UNICEF, and his radio station has 

been driven into bankruptcy. Kihura is appearing here 

at great personal and professional risk to tell his story. 

It is my great honor and privilege to introduce you to 

the recipient of the National Vaccine Information 

Center's humanitarian award - my good friend and 

colleague, Kihura Nkuba. 

KIHURA NKUBA: I am indeed very honored to be 

here and to have been invited by Barbara Fisher and 

Cathy Wiliams to come and tell my story, which is also 

my people's story. Normally, when they ask you to 

come and speak, you sit there and think of what's the 

first word that you'd say, but in listening to my brother 

Sunny Bates and Karen Forschner and Stanley Kopps 

(sp?) I was [unintelligible] and I was saying 'My God, 

if they can do this here in one of the most powerful 

countries on Earth, what will happen to me - what will 

happen to us ? If they can do that in the United States, 

then you know when it comes to other countries like 

Africa and Asia and South America, our chances are 

pretty slim. 

I did not start off as being a campaigner for other peoples' 

rights and polio. I am a pan-Africanist, and by that I 

mean I believe in equality of thought and practices that 

are rooted in the best interests of African people. I spent 

most of my time in England teaching film and television, 

and also running Pan-African conferences for so many 

African people that live in the Diaspora to mobilize them 

to go and do some work in Africa. And by then 

eventually, I remember it was at a conference in 

Manchester and somebody said to me 'You keep telling 

us about helping Africa, and however much you feel it's 

about swimming, one day you have to remove your 

clothes and jump into the water. Why don't you go to 

Africa yourself?' 

And at that time my wife and I decided to borrow money 

and raise some, and go and set up a radio station. And we 

thought of a radio station because I believe that just one 

person with a microphone and a radio can teach more 

people than a professor in a good university. So I started 

Great African Radio in 1999 and, like most radio stations 

that you find in Africa, we decided to broadcast in 

African languages and record African music and talk 

about issues that concern people, like growing food and 

storing grain and eating fruit and drinking clean water; 

and sanitation, and all the other issues that were really not 

(trained) into most of the urban stations that broadcast 

music. 


And on this program I ran a program that we call African 

metaphysics every night, and some people call it the hour 

of truth. It's a one and a half hour program where I talk 

about literally anything I wish. And it became so popular 

that people started organizing in theatres, in assembly 

halls, in churches and mosques, and they paid to have me 

go and speak there. So it was in one of these lectures I 

gave in one small town - and normally before I go, 


Continued from page 40 – Vaccine-Induced Polio 

like minders and people who do crowd control, and they 

hide me somewhere, and they introduce me last minute so 

that people don't see me before they have paid. 

Now, when I was in one of those hideouts, I sat with a 

preacher who started telling me a story of 1997 during the 

National Immunization Days. In 1996 the government of 

Uganda introduced what they call National Immunization 

Days. For those of you who don't know Uganda, Uganda 

is in East Africa. It is at the foothills of the Mountains of 

the Moon just where River Nile begins. And according to 

paleontology, archeology, molecular biology, it is one of 

the countries that is said to be the source of humanity 

because now I think everybody agrees that humanity, 

from the stage of Australopithecine to Homosapiens, 

started in Africa - according to UNESCO anyway. So - 

and it is governed as a democracy - quote, unquote - not 

that it's not a democracy like you've got here. It's just that 

I'm always very skeptical when I hear the word 

'democracy' mentioned. So they have a parliament. They 

have a president who is elected by all those that can vote 

and then they have a parliament. And in the northern part 

of Uganda just in one district there is some trouble by 

people who think they should have been president and 

not they guy who is in charge. 

So I was told by this preacher that when the government 

introduced the National Immunization Days in 1997, 

most of the children after vaccination started dying. The 

preacher told me that they had so much death that his 

cassock, that he wears to go and conduct the burial 

ceremony, got old. He said "I buried the children and my 

cassock got old." 

In the same room there was one mother who had four 

children, and she hid one and took three other children 

for vaccination, and three children died and that one 

survived. Now when I went to do my presentation and I 

asked most of the people who were there - about two, 

three thousand people - each person had the same story. 

Now, in 1992 I believed that vaccination was a good 

thing. I didn't know very much about vaccination like 

most people, and I thought the doctors must really know 

what they are doing. So I thought vaccination is a very 

good thing. But I had an argument with my wife who 

didn't want my son to receive vaccinations. So I started 

reading about polio, and I think I knew at that time that 

there were difficulties with the oral polio vaccine, which I 

called 'polio Sabin'. So in this lecture I said "I hope it's 

not the 'polio Sabin'". And that was just the one remark I 

made. I said "I hope it's not 'polio Sabin'" 

Now all my lectures are broadcast every evening, so I'd 

go before a crowd - I'd give a lecture and they'd broadcast 

it on radio at night. And the following day the 

government sent people to me to ask me about my remark 

- you know, what I meant about "I hope they're not using 

the 'polio Sabin'." I didn't know that that was the polio 

vaccination they were using in the country, because I 

think I had read from literature from the National 

Vaccine Information Center - the small consumer - I had 

a small book, the consumer guide, which must be one of 

the most well-read books in Uganda because everybody 

wanted a copy of it, including the health officials from 

the government. So they came to me and asked me - they 

said "What did you mean by 'you hope it's not polio 

Sabin'?" I said "Well, I hope it's not polio Sabin because, 

according to the information I have, it was stopped in 

America in 1996 because it was a cause of polio in 

America." And they said "Really? There's no polio in 

America." I said "Yeah?" The health officials told me 

they weren't vaccinating in America, and I said "No, 

that's not true. I know they vaccinate in America." They 

said "No, because they eliminated wild polio over there." 

I said "What do you mean wild polio?" They said "Well, 

there are two types of polio. One is wild and one is 

domestic." So I said "O.K. Of these two polios, which 

one are you trying to eliminate in this country?" They 

said "We're trying to eliminate the wild polio so you can 

have the domestic polio because the domestic polio can 

be controlled." And I said "Why don't you leave the wild 

polio in the bush? Why do you have to bring it - why do 

you have to go and fight wild polio to introduce it in the 

house? At least if it is out there then you know at least it's 

not threatening inside the house?" 

But anyway, soon after that, articles started appearing in 

the newspapers about myself, and they claimed that I was 

not really interested in my people - in African people, and 

that to demonstrate that, I had married a white wife - that 

I had all my children locked up in England, and they had 

been vaccinated, and I had stopped them coming to 

Africa because if they came to Africa they'd probably 

pick up some disease. Now all this was unfortunate for 

them because at the time my wife was in Africa and my 

children; and with all due respect, my wife was not white, 

but they tried to show that really I hated (African) people 

so much that I couldn't even marry somebody from them. 

Now then at that time, the parliament of Uganda, the 

Minister of Information, the minister in charge of (the) 

presidency, started writing the attorney general to close 

the radio station because I was broadcasting anti-presidency, 

started writing the attorney general to close the 

radio station because I was broadcasting anti-government 

messages. And they sent me civil intelligence to come 

and interrogate me. At that time they were saying it 

wasn't really polio they were interested in. It was that I 

had anti government views and I was plotting to over 




throw the government. Fortunately the intelligence 

officer who came to interrogate me proved to be very 

intelligent. When I told him that really the polio 

(vaccine) they were using in Uganda was discontinued 

in America because it was the sole cause of polio. And 

according to the information I had, there was really no 

polio in Uganda. 

There had been no polio. I grew up to be twenty five. I 

didn't see anybody with polio. I started seeing polio 

when I went to the cities where polio vaccination had 

taken place. And the more they challenged me, the 

more I started digging about polio, you know, to 

educate myself and stand ready to go to court or to be 

charged. And then what the intelligence officer 

recommended to government was (that they) bring 

health officials to debate me at the radio station so that 

if I was telling lies, then they should come and expose 

me before my very audience. 

To this the Minister of Health, who was backed by 

UNICEF, the United States Agency for International 

Development and the World Health Organization, said 

that really it shouldn't be like this. I shouldn't debate 

polio because I'm not a scientist. Now I have been a 

broadcaster for more than fourteen years, and all I was 

saying was not that people should not go for 

vaccination, but that if they are to go for vaccination, if 

there is a vaccine that is deemed to be safe, then that's 

what they should use. And then by a stroke of good 

luck somebody brought me an insert that comes with 

the polio vaccine, and it was from Pasteur-Mer???? a 

French company that manufactures the polio vaccine, 

and that was the one that was used in 1997 when 

children started dying in large numbers. And when I 

looked at the contra-indications it stated that inactivated 

polio vaccine and not oral polio vaccine should be used 

in situations where families had HIV - where there was 

a history of HIV in the family. And when I got this 

information I was really shocked because since 1984 

Uganda has had a very difficult HIV and AIDS 

problem. In fact it says that if a child is inadvertently 

given the oral polio vaccine, that that child should be 

quarantined for four to seven weeks because oral polio 

vaccine is "live" and they keep shedding it between that 

period, and they could contaminate other people. So I 

was saying here is the manufacturer who is writing for 

anybody who could read English that please do not give 

this oral polio vaccine to population that have HIV and 

here is the Ministry of Health which, in its own 

wisdom, says this has to be used here. 

So, armed with this insert from the manufacturer, I 

decided to install wireless internet in the radio station 

and also to see what other people were saying. At that 

time one of the main advisors to the government of 

Uganda was the Centers for Disease Control - one of the 

most respected agencies in the world. So I tried to see 

what the Centers for Disease Control was saying about 

this oral polio vaccine, which should not be used 

according to the manufacturer, and the Centers for 

Disease Control was even more clear than the 

manufacturer. In fact, this is what it says. It says that 

persons who have congenitally acquired immune 

deficiency disease -e.g. combined immune deficiency, 

blah, blah - should not be given oral polio vaccine 

because of their substantially increased risk for vaccine 

associated disease. Now, they continue: they say 

"inactivated polio vaccine and not oral polio vaccine 

should be used to vaccinate immunodeficient persons and 

their household contacts." So I said if this is the Centers 

for Disease Control which is advising the government of 

Uganda, and it is saying we should not use oral polio 

vaccine, and here is the manufacturer saying oral polio 

vaccine should not be used, now why should oral polio 

vaccine be used here ? 

And then at the time, because of the heightened tension 

that the Minister of Health was bringing to bear on the 

radio station, then other people started throwing their 

own questions. And they went like this: In Africa polio 

does not kill anybody and they say it's very rare to catch. 

It's really very rare to get paralytic polio. They say it's in 

very rare circumstances, so what is it that is killing 

people in Africa? Malaria. Every five seconds a child is 

dying of malaria in Africa. Now to get the dose of lifesaving 

anti-malaria is about $5 but there is no 

government to give anti-malaria. When somebody gets 

malaria, if they have no money they even die. So the 

question I was asking and many people were asking was 

'If you really want to help children, why begin with a 

disease that they don't have? (applause) Why not look for 

something that is killing them and save them from what is 

killing them?' And then (inaudible) .............'you know 

what, I like you very much. I save your children from this 

killer disease. Now there are no other diseases apart from 

this rare polio, so let's go and fight that as well.' But you 

don't begin with the rarest disease and spend all the 

government's meagre resources fighting polio, which is 

not a threat to most people, and then ignore something 

that is killing them in large numbers like malaria, like 

AIDS, like cholera, issues to do with sanitation, stunted 

growth - all the main things that matter to people the 

government was not fighting. So what they decided to do 

was to appeal to the president and say... and the president 

says to them 'What you could do is go and take him to 

court and if the court decides that he's giving false 

information, then charge him with sedition which carries 




a death sentence or a life sentence.' So when they told 

me this I said 'Well, if I am to die' - I think there is an 

American poet called McCain, and he had a poem 

which was "If I Am To Die". So if I was to die, I did 

not want to take anybody with me, but I really have to 

give people a run for their money. So I decided to use 

the experience that I had gained in broadcasting and 

research for over 14 years to research everything that I 

could find out about polio to prepare myself for the 

ultimate challenge if I was to go to court. 

I discovered that really the whole concept of 

vaccination is like getting a disease, putting it in an 

undiseased person to cure a disease that person hasn't 

got. It's like if you have an army and it's fighting an 

enemy, and then you bring the enemy into the barracks 

just to see if the soldiers can defend themselves should 

an enemy surprise them. I mean, you don't do such 

things in a war. And then I started asking myself - 

humanity has lived in Africa for 5.5 million years from 

the stage of Australopithecines to Homo sapiens. Polio 

vaccination in Uganda started in 1963. So if we were 

all to die of polio like the Minister of Health was telling 

us, we would have died by 1963 and it would have 

been 'case closed'. There would have been nobody to 

vaccinate. So the fact that we have survived 5.5 million 

years without polio vaccination shows that people can 

survive without it. (applause) And if really somebody is 

that desperate for the vaccine, then let's look for a 

vaccine that - you know - somebody says 'This is safer 

than the other.' Because the manufacturer who should 

know more than the Minister of Health that we have, or 

the World Health Organization, says 'Do not use this in 

this country.' 

Now, when they wrote to the attorney general and the 

attorney general asked me to come and make my 

representation, and I went to the attorney general and 

gave him my views of what I thought of inactivated 

polio vaccine - and basically my case was simple. This 

oral polio vaccine was discontinued in America. Why? 

Because it's a cause of polio, and you're telling me that 

the minister of health here wants to (use it) to stop 

polio. You don't stop polio by bringing something that 

causes polio, and giving it to people. You stop polio by 

bringing something that will prevent it. That was my 

first argument. The second argument was - the 

manufacturer says don't use it, and since the minister of 

health and myself are not manufacturers, we have to 

wait for that time when the manufacturer says 'Use it' 

and the attorney general says 'O.K. I don't think he can 

be prosecuted.' And he wrote to the minister of health 

and the minister of information and said 'I think you 

have a weak case. If you took this person to court you'd 

probably lose.' So what they decided to do then was to 

use what they call the broadcast council, and the 

broadcast council is the one that gives licenses for broadcasters. 

So you couldn't broadcast without the broadcast 

council. 

I have to say that at that time every government minister, 

every member of parliament was talking about the radio 

station as how we are misleading the public - giving false 

information - really they were calling me a child killer 

and everything, and most of my advertisers completely 

fled, because in Uganda 80% of the advertisers is the 

government anyway. And the government was not going 

to advertise with the radio station that was giving it that 

trouble. So the broadcast council then wrote to me saying 

that I was giving information that was deemed to be antigovernment 

and anti-people, and they were going to 

withdraw the license. In fact, to back their words up, the 

minister of information came to the council hall where 

the radio is based with soldiers and the police and local 

counselors and district medical officers, and they called 

me and he had a pen in his hand and he said 'This is what 

I want you to do. I want you to go on radio tonight on 

your popular program and tell people that polio Sabin is 

safe - that they can have it and that you support it. If you 

don't do this I am going to sign, recommending that your 

radio station be closed, and by tomorrow you won't be on 

air. I looked at the handsome minister of information in 

the face and I said "Go to heaven and stay there" because 

I was not going to do such a thing. (applause) I did not 

believe that oral polio vaccine was safe and I was not 

going to tell anybody to mislead the public that it was. 

So when he left I expected the radio station to be closed, 

and what I did is I went off air. I stopped broadcasting 

my program voluntarily. So I stopped the broadcasting. 

So what happened was really a revolution because people 

waited for my program to come, and what they did - they 

decided to come to the radio station and mount a vigil - 

and before long I had over ten thousand people at the 

radio station - taxi drivers threatening to block the road - 

I had riots in almost every town demanding that my 

program come back on air. And at that time information 

had gone (out) that the government was really raining 

down on me because of oral polio vaccine, and that's 

what upset people. They said 'What's in polio (vaccine) 

that you really want to give to us ? When we want 

clothes, you can't give us clothes. When we want 

education you can't give us education. When our children 

die you can't give us coffins or even come and assist us. 

Why are you forcing polio (vaccine) on us ? If it's so 

good why can't we see the benefit of it ?" You know 

because it was their children dying. And then they started 

narrating all these stories..... At the main hospital in 




Mbarara during that month of 1977 more than 600 

children had died following polio vaccination. 600 

children! So even some of the timid medical 

practitioners who were initially afraid to come out, 

started coming out giving information and saying 'Oh, 

we knew this oral polio vaccine was trouble because as 

soon as the child receives it, they get a temperature 

and their health goes downhill and there is nothing that 

you could do.' So the mothers said they would not take 

their children for oral polio vaccination. And this 

information was going back to the government at the 

capitol. So what the government decided to do was to 

say let's send a team of experts to come and debate me 

at the radio (station) on my program. I have to tell you 

that on that day in the month of July - I think July 22nd 

- some date like that - all the town sold out of radios 

and mobile phones because they were ready to ring 

inside the radio station and tell the doctors that really it 

should be their choice to decide what is given to their 

children, and it shouldn't be the choice of the doctors 

(applause); and that whether they agreed with me or 

not, that both sides should present their information to 

the parents so that the parents can make a choice. Now 

I thought that these doctors were going to come with 

thousands of books and evidence and references, and I 

spent two weeks preparing myself. I ordered books 

from Australia and Britain, and Barbara sent me some 

literature, and I didn't sleep for almost a week. I was 

reading day and night trying to educate myself about 

immunity - how the body's immunity works. I was 

trying to educate myself about viruses jumping species 

and immuno-suppressive treatments, and I learned 

about - for example - the Marburg virus which 

appeared in Germany in 1967 [unintelligible] from a 

[unintelligible] laboratory that they were developing 

oral polio vaccine, and actually the monkeys had come 

from Uganda. So the monkey viruses had jumped from 

- had been - some of the viruses that lie dormant in 

some of these species for a long time - if you take these 

viruses and put them in the human body, they could do 

anything. And one of the things they did was to give 

Marburg, which is a cousin to ebola. In fact, after 

reading that information I predicted [what year ? N.S.] 

that there would be ebola in Uganda because of these 

vaccinations, and there WAS ebola in Uganda a year 

after ! So they started saying I was a prophet ! 

So when they came, here am I in the studio thinking 

'God ! These are the real experts. How am I going to 

handle them ? I'm just a broadcaster - somebody who 

has questions that any right-thinking member of the 

society should ask.' And when they came they were 

than I was, and they started saying 'You know, we 

really apologize because... one of the leaders of the team 

of the district medical officer said 'You know what ? I 

have never read even a medical journal since I left 

medical school. We have no internet. I cannot afford to 

buy new books. How would I know what is safe or what 

is not ? All I know is that the World Health Organization 

says it's safe. UNICEF says it's safe, and all these other 

agencies say it's safe. So if it is safe then we must use it.' 

and then my first question was 'Well, why didn't the 

World Health Organization say it was safe for America to 

use ? Doesn't the jurisdiction of UNICEF extend to 

America. If they stopped it in America why should we 

use it here ?' And people were saying to them 'O.K. - you 

are the physicians. You studied the same things as the 

physicians who manufactured this vaccine.' And they said 

'Yeah. You know, when you are a physician you don't 

want to say No, I didn't study that. I'm sorry - I went to 

school but I didn't study what you studied.' They said 

'Yeah, we did. We studied exactly the same thing.' And I 

said 'O.K. Why do we have to import the vaccine anyway 

? Why can't we manufacture the vaccine here if you know 

what goes in it ?' And they said 'Oh, that's a problem. We 

don't have factories.' And then people were ringing in to 

the studio asking - 'We had our own way of ensuring our 

childrens' immunity. You know, when a child was born 

there was an assortment of herbs that were collected from 

the wild, and then they were boiled, and every day the 

child would bathe in these herbs for six months, and a 

little bit of the herbs would be given to the child to drink.' 

And it was in this debate that most of the physicians 

admitted that that method was as effective as the 

immunization that was being carried out. So people were 

saying 'Well, if we have this method that had proved very 

good for us all this time, why are you giving us oral polio 

? And why are you not fighting the diseases that affect us 

? And most significantly : where are all these so-called 

paralyzed people - all our people that are physically 

challenged - that you said existed in villages ?' 

And at that time we had marshalled the people that had 

contracted polio after immunization, and they were in the 

studio with us. In that debate most of the people that had 

come to debate us ran out of the studio, and they could 

not answer the questions from the people. And the 

national newspapers splashed these headlines so that even 

in other parts of the country where my radio station was 

not reaching started picking up the story. The World 

Health Organization got worried. UNICEF got worried. 

UNICEF representatives came to the station to appeal to 

me, saying 'Well, we know you have a case but you are 

giving it to the wrong audience. I mean these people don't 

understand what you are saying. If you are talking to 

people in cities - you know, people in villages – they 

cannot understand the argument. Polio is good. O.K. it 




may have some difficulties, but why don't you come 

and join us ? Then we will support you and give you 

more advertising.' And...I didn't think it was an 

advertising issue. I thought it was a moral issue at the 

time. 

But just for them to prove their case, one time I'm 

leaving Mbarara, which is where my radio station was 

based, and I'm going to Kampala - 250 miles away - 

and in my driving mirror I see two pickup trucks 

following me. And they must have followed me for 

about 100 miles. I noticed it because the two people 

that were driving were white, and there aren't a lot of 

white people in that region. So when I saw them 

following me I stopped - they slow down and overtake 

me and when I went back on the road I see them again. 

I said I thought I was in trouble. So I reached the next 

town, turned off my engine and waited for about two 

hours, and I thought I must have lost them. So I jumped 

on the road again. I am driving full speed - about 

maybe 120 MPH because I am late. I was going to get 

my son from the airport and I had already lost two 

hours trying to avoid people who were following me, 

and Lo and behold one of the pickup trucks is in my 

driving mirror again. And I am going downhill and this 

guy comes and over- takes me, gets in front of me and 

brakes. He had a big pickup truck and behind there 

were bull bars (?) And the other pickup that is behind 

me is also very close to my bumper. So I tried to avoid 

by going off on the right side of the road. In Uganda 

they drive on the left - and he also goes on the right 

side of the road. When I attempt to come back onto the 

road my vehicle starts overturning and it must have 

overturned about 15 times. The vehicle was totally 

mashed up, and it was near a small town. Everybody 

thought nobody could escape from that car. I thought I 

had died. I was still breathing. I could hear myself 

breathing, but I thought I had died. I looked at the 

mashed car and the smashed windows, and I thought 

'Maybe heaven looks this ugly.' So eventually people 

came and they cut the door, and I waited to see... 

because when it overturned it knocked somebody who 

was on a bicycle, but the person didn't die. And it 

knocked bannana trees . It was horrible. But I came out. 

When I stepped out everybody started running. They 

thought it was a ghost walking - some kind of dead man 

walking. So one of the people recognized me, and they 

took me to hospital, and they found I had just sustained 

very minor injuries. 

So I knew that they were going to make their point and 

they were going to make it very well. But at that time I 

think I had passed the door of no return, and I could not 

take a step backwards. So the minister of health knew 

that if they lost the debate it would be very difficult for 

them. Because in speaking to Barbara I also understand 

that here you follow a certain regime - like you give 

certain doses in certain years, and after that it's finished. 

In Uganda or Kenya or Tanzania it's not like that. You 

have what they call routine where your children keep 

getting all these vaccines. And then they have National 

Immunization Days. It doesn't care whether you go 

through the immunization or whether you were 

immunized last year. You come this year and they still 

give you the same thing. So for polio, for measles there is 

no end. It's that complicated. 

So what happened then was the government then decided 

to say 'Well, those experts that came weren't really 

experts. They were some kind of experts but they are not 

experts. And these are the experts that are now going to 

come in the final debate on radio.' And I said 'O.K. The 

experts can come because my questions are still the 

same.' So they brought now a team of other experts which 

was supposed to be the final team of experts, and when 

they came this was my first question : 'Tell us - you say 

that this oral polio virus is attenuated, which means 

weakened. What does that mean ?' And the guy says 

'Well, it's not really a virus. It's the jacket of a virus.' 'It's 

a live virus.' 'It's an attenuated live virus.' And they 

started saying 'No, it's not a live virus. It's the jacket of a 

virus.' Then another one said 'No no no' And this is live 

on radio so the experts from the ministry of health are 

contradicting themselves in a live debate listened to by 

more than 15 million people who for a long time have 

trusted doctors as really people who should know 

everything about vaccines. And one of them said 'No, it's 

not a jacket. You can't say it's a jacket. It's just harmless.' 

O.K. well if it's harmless, and if the virus goes into the 

body, it can do several things. It can lie dormant; it can 

die, or it can become potent. 

And then people were ringing and saying 'What would 

you call a virus in the local language ?' And one of the 

experts called it a small animal, and that's where 

problems started because then another caller would ring 

in and say 'Well, if it's a small animal, what does it eat ? 

And if you don't give it food and it gets really hungry, 

what would happen ? Won't it attack the body's immune 

system ?' Now you may find this hilarious and laugh, but 

really those are deep philosophical questions that 

scientists grapple with. When a virus gets in your body it 

can do several things. It can die. It can sleep, or it can 

become potent or virulent. And if that happens, then you 

have a problem. So this expert debate didn't do the work, 

because what people were interested in was to hear why it 

is possible that they cannot get the killed virus. And the 

answer was that it would be too expensive - it would be 




too expensive to give the killed virus to the population. 

And then the people said 'O.K. if it's too expensive, we 

don't want the cheap one. We think at least we are 

worth five dollars or ten dollars, or something like this. 

So if you can't bring the inoculated polio virus, we are 

not going to have the oral polio.' And that's what they 

did. But the government was ready for them - not really 

the government - the minister of health, the World 

Health Organization and the UNICEF. They mobilized 

the army, and the police and moved from house to 

house. They had asked the local authorities to do a list 

of people who had children, so they moved from house 

to house grabbing children at gunpoint and vaccinating 

them. 

Now those that knew - as soon as the army got into the 

village - the rest of the people who had children would 

run into the bush, and they stayed there for a week. And 

there is the story of this child who was met on the road, 

and they grabbed him and asked him whether he was 

immunized, and he said 'Yes'. He lied to them - said 

'Yes' - He was running away, but he said 'Yes' and they 

said 'Well, we still have to immunize you anyway. So 

they got the (dose). They put it in his mouth and the 

child spit it out – first time. They put it a second time 

(spit) - third (spit) - fourth (spit) and then they hit the 

child and then the child ran away unvaccinated. So it 

became a very difficult exercise, and the government 

put all the blame on me. They said it must have been 

me who had learned all these hypno-therapeutic 

techniques and had (majored ?) in psycho-cranial 

therapies, and I was an agent of all these organizations 

abroad that really do not believe in traditional 

medicine; and I had hypnotized the population so that 

they were not able to respond to government messages 

on vaccination - something that was totally good for 

them. Now the thing was - those that went for 

vaccination came immediately to report reactions, and a 

good many of them lost their children. Those that did 

not go for vaccination did not have the same reaction. 

So they would be ringing in to the radio station and 

saying 'Well, I vaccinated my child and this is what 

happened.' I know this is what was happening even 

before we started, but they had no way of expressing 

themselves. They had no means. So at this stage most 

people really got convinced that there must be a 

relationship between having a history of HIV... I have 

to tell you HIV is very big in Uganda - very big in East 

Africa. I was born in a family of eleven, but from 1987 

up to today I have lost eight members of my family 

through HIV. So when the manufacturer says 'Do not 

give this vaccine to families that have a history of HIV' 

there are no families in Uganda that have no history of 

HIV. Everybody knows somebody who has died or has 

lost an uncle or a brother's wife or his children through 

HIV. And it's that relationship that people were able to 

put together saying 'Maybe really the oral polio vaccine, 

when given to population that has HIV - when live 

vaccine is given to a population that has HIV, it produces 

that reaction.' 

But for me, up to today, that is still the situation. The oral 

polio vaccine in Uganda, northern Tanzania, Rwanda, 

Burundi, Congo and part of Kenya has become a hotly 

contested debate. Thousands of people, during the 

National Immunization Days in the months of July and 

September, go into the bush and stay there for weeks. The 

army and the police move house to house looking for 

children to vaccinate. At the same time, things that kill 

children like malaria, cholera, issues of stunted growth, 

sanitation, are completely untackled. 

Now - last year I came to Washington to give a lecture to 

the Voice of America, and I decided to ring the Centers 

for Disease Control. Normally when I travel I record my 

travel and I do a travel program. So I tell people what I'm 

seeing because I know the majority of my people have no 

chance of travelling - so I describe the situation to them. 

And I rand the Centers for Disease Control and they have 

a line of experts that you can ask different questions. And 

I said 'I am living in America and I want to go to Uganda, 

and my children have not received oral polio vaccination. 

And they said 'No, they can't receive oral polio 

vaccination in this country.' I said 'Why not ?' and they 

said 'Well, you can get polio from oral polio vaccination.' 

And I said 'Is this the Centers for Disease Control ?' and 

they said 'Yes'. 'Are you sure you are not the Centers for 

Disease Uncontrol ?' They said 'No, we are the Centers 

for Disease Control - the real McCoy.' So I said 'What if I 

have a history of HIV and I receive oral polio ?' They 

said 'That would be really pretty dangerous. It could be a 

death sentence.' (And I said) can I have your name ?' 'No, 

you can't have my name. You can have a reference 

number.' I said 'O.K.' but I recorded this, and when I went 

back I played it on radio. (applause) I said 'Well, this is 

not me now. You can't arrest me. You have to arrest the 

Centers for Disease Control, because, I mean, it's them 

doing the talking. It's not me. I have just given them 

space on the radio !' 

So the minister of health said 'O.K. this is what we're 

going to do. We're going to invite you and you'll come 

and sit with all the experts from World Health Organization, 

from UNICEF and the minister of health, and 

we'll do a deal.' So what I did - I went to the website of 

the Centers for Disease Control. I photocopied a big 

document on vaccine reactions, and I took it with me. 




So I sat before the minister of health and I said 'Well, 

before we can do any deal, I just want to see what our 

very good friends from the Centers for Disease Control 

say about vaccine reactions - particularly polio.' And 

the minister gave it to the head of public health, and the 

head of public health looks at this document and says 

'This is not a genuine CDC document. This is from the 

internet.' And I said 'So what ? It's from the internet - 

the CDC on the internet. This is the 21st Century !' He 

said 'No, it's not.' And I said 'O.K. At the bottom there 

is a number, and it says you can ring this number. Why 

don't we ring the Centers for Disease Control ? Here is 

a mobile phone' And he said 'No, we can't ring them. 

We wouldn't know if it was the CDC answering.' So 

what do we do ? They said 'We'll send the document to 

the embassy and ask the embassy to verify if it's a CDC 

document.' 'Oh' I said - 'Well, you have an expert from 

the CDC in Kampala. Why don't you call that expert to 

verify ?' He said 'No, he's sick. He's not available for 

verification.' So I said 'O.K. I will do a deal with you 

only after you verify that this is a genuine CDC 

document. We'll give each other 24 hours. You go and 

do your verification, and then after that I'll come and 

we can deal.' 24 hours. No reaction. One week - one 

month - I am still waiting. 

But in the meantime I had two radio stations. One of 

them is now closed. I employed over 60 people. I am 6 

months in arrears. I can't afford to pay them. As I speak 

I have not a single advertiser on my radio station that 

has an audience of more than 50 million. My radio 

program, when it goes on air - even buses that carry 

people stop to listen to my program for one and a half 

hours. And I have already told you that people even pay 

to hear me speak. But I have taken a bank loan from 

England. My house is up for grabs, including all my 

books and my videos and everything - just for asking 

simple questions as 'Why don't you fight a disease that 

kills people instead of one that has a theoretical risk of 

attacking them ? Why don't you deal with issues that 

people want you to deal with, and maybe after you have 

dealt with that, then you can deal with oral polio 

vaccine ? Why use a vaccine that was discon tinued in 

America - which is a technological nation where people 

should know - and you use it here ? Why at least can't 

you say to people "Pay for the killed vaccine" so that 

they get the vaccine that, according to the 

manufacturer, would be less harmful?' 

That is my story. I am not opposed to vaccination. I 

have not gone out to cause trouble for anybody. It's just 

I felt as a broadcaster my job is to ask questions that 

my audiences would have asked had they been in the 

same position that I was, or had the opportunity to meet 

the people that matter. So - and that's what I did. Instead 

of giving me appropriate answers, I was victimized. One 

government minister said the experts from the ministry of 

health had carried out a study and they had found me mad 

! And I said 'Well, if you say I am mad, I think you could 

say it's mutually assured destruction, and definitely this 

poison would have mutually assured us of destruction.' 

So in my own madness it seems I was the only person 

that could stand in front of millions of people to ask 

legitimate questions. 

I know one thing - that people who have lost their 

children as a result of taking oral polio vaccine will not 

be going for immunization unless that policy is changed. 

I also know - I think if you go to the website of the World 

Health Organization you'll find my name - you know they 

depict me as this anti-polio campaigner and whatever, 

which I am not - But I also know that the World Health 

Organization, UNICEF and all these agencies are really 

looking for what they call victory - to vaccinate the last 

child. And they are saying that right now the person who 

stands in front of them is myself. 

For more than six months I have not been on radio 

broadcasting because I was involved in a conflict in 

eastern Congo - in the Democratic Republic of Congo - 

and it was the center that I ran, called the Pan-African 

Center for Strategic and International Studies that began 

the peace initiative about a year ago that led to different 

peace accords that have been signed to bring peace in this 

country. And one of the peace conferences was chaired 

by myself for more than six months. Now I also know 

that the population is not going to accept these oral polio 

vaccinations unless they change to killed vaccine. But for 

the government and for the minister of health, and all the 

other agencies, they will continue to look at me as the 

enemy. I have been out of radio for this period of time, 

but still there is very little people going for vaccination, 

and the government is pouring in more money - millions 

and millions of dollars of meagre resources that a small 

country like Uganda cannot afford. And most of that is 

really going into misinformation - a campaign against 

me. That's my story. Thank you very much. 

Contact Kihura Nkuba through Barbara Loe Fisher at The 

National Vaccine Information Center; 421-E Church 

Street Vienna, VA 22180; phone: 703-938-0342; fax: 

703-938-5768. 

http://www.rense.com/general39/polio.htm 

http://www.blackherbals.com/vaccine_induced_polio.htm 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 


African Health Leaders Vow 

to Keep Polio Eradication 

Goal 

17-January-2005 

Following a year in which Africa grappled with an 

escalating polio epidemic, ministers of health of the key 

affected countries today concluded that the spread of 

polio was slowing in most countries. They agreed to 

step up their vigilance and their vaccination 

programmes in order to meet polio eradication targets 

this year. 

The 2005 eradication strategy for Africa, reviewed by 

Health Ministers of eight African countries at the 

World Health Organization’s headquarters in Geneva, 

involves a massive series of immunization campaigns 

across 25 countries, supported by strengthened polio 

surveillance. 

The scale-up comes in the wake of a challenging year 

for the region, in which the number of African children 

stricken by polio doubled to 1037 (85 per cent of the 

global total). Cases began to rise during 2003 following 

a suspension of polio immunization activities in parts 

of Nigeria. The upswing rapidly reached epidemic 

proportions, propelled by low immunization rates 

across the region. The continent is further threatened by 

the swift spread of the epidemic in Sudan in late 2004 

and the halt of immunization activities in Côte d'Ivoire 

due to civil unrest. 

Some countries are still feeling the impact of the 2004 

epidemic, particularly the Sudan, which went from zero 

to 112 cases in the last 9 months. The Sudan outbreak, 

which is a result of the spread of poliovirus originating 

in Nigeria, now threatens the polio-free Horn of Africa, 

the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Gulf region 

as evinced by a recent case in Saudi Arabia. Authorities 

in the Sudan carried out an emergency campaign this 

week, which kicked off immediately after the signing 

of the North-South peace agreement. 

Following resumption of polio immunization in 

Nigeria’s Kano state in mid-2004, Africa held the 

world’s largest series of immunization activities, 

synchronized across 23 African countries, reaching 80 

million children. These campaigns have begun to rein 

in the epidemic. In northern Nigeria, independent 

monitoring shows that nearly 75 per cent of children 

were vaccinated against polio, the highest numbers ever 

for the area. 

Côte d'Ivoire and the Sudan, as well as Burkina Faso, 

the Central African Republic and Chad now have re- 

established poliovirus transmission, meaning the virus 

has been circulating among the population for more than 

six months. Representatives of each of these countries 

attended the meeting in Geneva, together with Egypt, 

Nigeria and Niger. 

Despite the setbacks, all the evidence looks promising for 

stopping polio transmission this year, the Ministers 

stressed. Similar mass campaigns previously stopped 

polio in nearly all countries across the region. Progress in 

Egypt eliminated all but one type of poliovirus, paving 

the way for the introduction of a new vaccine there that 

targets the single remaining type. 

All the year’s activities will be lead by the African 

Union. At the upcoming African Union summit in Abuja 

(29-30 January) the continent’s heads of state are 

expected to announce a similar ramp-up of action and to 

vow to increase independent monitoring of immunization 

activities to ensure quality coverage. 

The meeting in Geneva today was the one-year follow-up 

to the Geneva Declaration on the Eradication of 

Poliomyelitis, a 2004 pledge by polio-endemic countries 

to intensify their activities towards eradication. The 16- 

year Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a public-private 

partnership, has reduced the incidence of polio across the 

world by 99% since 1988. Endemic countries in Asia - 

Afghanistan, India and Pakistan - will examine their 

progress in a February meeting. 

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is spearheaded by 

WHO, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease 

Control and Prevention and UNICEF. The polio 

eradication coalition includes governments of countries 

affected by polio; private foundations (e.g. United 

Nations Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation); 

development banks (e.g. the World Bank); donor 

governments (e.g. Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, 

Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, 

Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, 

Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States of 

America); the European Commission; humanitarian and 

nongovernmental organizations (e.g. the International 

Red Cross and Red Crescent societies) and corporate 

partners (e.g. Sanofi Pasteur, De Beers). 

http://www.news-medical.net/?id=7335 

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☻☻☻☻☻☻ 


Uganda: Ministry Exceeds 

Polio Vaccination Targets 

Edward Echwalu 

15 April 2009 

The Weekly Observer 

The Ministry of Health has vaccinated more than two 

million children under five years in the first phase of its 

emergency polio vaccination exercise carried out in the 

29 high risk districts of northern Uganda. 

This comes as a response to the unexpected reemergence 

of the virus in February, 13 years since the 

country last reported a polio case. Seven cases have 

been reported so far. Phase one, in which the ministry 

planned to vaccinate about 2.2 million children, ended 

up exceeding that figure by about 130,000 children. 

According to a report released last week, Amuru 

District had the highest coverage with all its eight subcounties 

covered, while Moroto which had the least 

coverage had only three sub-counties of its 11 covered. 

The exercise had 100% coverage of only 10 of 29 

districts where all sub-counties were covered. 

Carried out in partnership with World Health 

Organisation and UNICEF, the exercise will now focus 

on the second and third phases between April 25 -28; 

and May 23 -25, 2009 respectively. 

Polio is acquired through drinking water or eating food 

contaminated with the polio virus (oral-faecal route). 

It's enhanced by poor sanitation and low immunisation 

coverage. Fever and sudden weakness in the legs and 

arms are some of the symptoms. 

State Minister for Health (General Duties), Dr. Richard 

Nduhura, said while launching the vaccination 

campaign, that those trying to sabotage the exercise are 

irresponsible citizens. "When government comes out to 

immunise our children, it's well intended," Nduhura 

said. "It's an act of treason for anybody to sabotage the 

immunisation exercise." 

The minister was reacting to concerns that politicisation 

of the exercise has discouraged some parents from 

taking their children for immunisation. Such parents 

believe that the vaccine could harm their children. 

"This of course is rubbish," Nduhura said. 

"Government can never have such an intention. It is 

very irresponsible of such people who call themselves 

leaders to demobilise a well intended exercise like this 

one." 


☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Continued from page 39 – Polio Made from 

Scratch 

Other virologists are sceptical. 

Compared with living things such as bacteria, animals 

and plants, viruses are rudimentary - even their status as 

organisms is debated. Building complex life forms from 

scratch, at least using current technology, is still regarded 

as impossible. 

Eckard Wimmer of the State University of New York in 

Stony Brook and his colleagues assembled large chunks 

of the poliovirus genome by joining up the four chemical 

subunits of DNA in the correct sequence. They put this 

synthetic virus genome into "cell juice" - a mixture of 

protein-building molecules and catalysts - and watched 

the virus assemble itself 1 . 

The re-engineered virus infected mouse cells just as a 

normal poliovirus would and successfully replicated itself 

in them. 

"It's a beautiful study," says virologist Olen Kew of the 

US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. The 

individual steps of Wimmer's process, such as 

manufacturing the sequence, and growing a virus outside 

a cell, had been demonstrated before. The strength of this 

study is its having strung them all together," explains 

Kew. 

Open season? 

The gene sequences for ebola, influenza, smallpox, HIV 

and many other viruses are publicly available on the 

Internet. Wimmer argues that it could now be open 

season for rogue virus engineers. "You can make any 

virus from published data," he says. 

But poliovirus is easier to build than many others. It has a 

very short and simple genome and assembles itself 

directly from a DNA template; others go through 

intermediate translation stages. 

More complex viruses could be synthesized, Wimmer 

believes, by additional chemical steps, or by putting 

synthetic gene sequences into living cells. 

The likelihood of anyone trying this is tiny, thinks Kew. 

The poliovirus genome is 7,500 subunits long; that of 

smallpox is more than 24 times longer. Synthesizing 

larger viruses from scratch would be "very difficult 

indeed", he says. Making the building blocks would 

demand new technologies and lots of money. 

"This is not something you could do in your garden 

shed," agrees Neil Berry, who studies HIV at Britain's 

National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in 

Potters Bar. 



Continued from page 49 – Polio Made from Scratch 

Even for a small virus such as HIV, there is hardly any 

need. "Nature has got a head start on us," Berry 

explains. Most pathogenic viruses are already present 

in the environment, and making one as virulent as a 

wild form would be nigh on impossible. 

Says Kew: "Once any new sequence is published it's 

clear the virus can be recovered but we've assumed that 

for about 20 years". 

References 

Cello, J., Paul, A.V. & Wimmer, E. Chemical synthesis 

of poliovirus cDNA: Generation of infectious virus in 

the absence of natural template. Science published 

online, doi:10.1126/science.1072266 (2002). |Article| 

© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 

2003 

http://www.blackherbals.com/polio_made_from_scratch.htm 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Officials say Drug caused 

Nigeria Polio 

Maria Cheng 

October 5, 2007 

The Associated Press 

A polio outbreak in Nigeria was caused by the vaccine 

designed to stop it, international health officials say, 

leaving at least 69 children paralyzed. 

It is a frightening paradox in a part of the world that 

already distrusts western vaccines, making it even 

tougher to stamp out age-old diseases. 

The outbreak was caused by the live polio virus that is 

used in vaccines given orally — the preferred method 

in developing countries because it is cheaper and 

doesn't require medical training to dispense. 

"This vaccine is the most effective tool we have against 

the virus, but it's like fighting fire with fire," said Olen 

Kew, a virologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease 

Control and Prevention. 

The CDC and the World Health Organization 

announced the cause of the polio outbreak last week, 

even though they knew about it last year. 

Outbreaks caused by the oral vaccine's live virus have 

happened before. But the continuing Nigerian outbreak 

is the biggest ever caused by the vaccine. It also 

follows a nearly yearlong boycott of the vaccine in 

Africa's most populous country because of unfounded 

fears the vaccine was a Western plot to sterilize 

Muslims. 

Officials now worry that the latest vaccine-caused 

Nigerian outbreak could trigger another vaccine scare. 

Experts say such outbreaks only happen when too few 

children are vaccinated. In northern Nigeria, only about 

39 percent of children are fully protected against polio. 

The oral polio vaccine contains a weakened version of 

polio virus. Children who have been vaccinated excrete 

the virus, and in unsanitary conditions it can end up in the 

water supply, spreading to unvaccinated children. 

In rare instances, as the virus passes through 

unimmunized children, it can mutate into a form that is 

dangerous enough to spark new outbreaks. 

In 2001, officials reported that 22 children were 

paralyzed from polio in the Dominican Republic and 

Haiti in this way. Subsequent vaccine-caused polio 

outbreaks have occurred in the Philippines, Madagascar, 

China and Indonesia. 

In the West, the polio vaccine is given as a shot and uses 

an inactivated virus, but that method is more expensive 

and requires training. 

In Nigeria, the outbreak comes "in the wake of all the 

other problems they've had in," said Dr. Donald A. 

Henderson, who led WHO's smallpox eradication 

campaign in the 1970s. 

In 2003, politicians in northern Nigeria canceled 

vaccination campaigns for nearly a year, claiming the 

vaccine was a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. That led 

to an explosion of polio, and the virus jumped to about 

two dozen countries. 

Now, health officials' decision to keep quiet about the 

cause of the outbreak for so long may look suspicious. 

Dr. David Heymann, WHO's top polio official, said that 

because the organization considered the outbreak to be a 

problem for scientists and not something that would 

change global vaccination practices, they thought it was 

was unnecessary to immediately share publicly. 

CDC's Kew added: "The people who are against 

immunization may seize on anything that could 

strengthen their position, even if it's scientifically 

untenable." 

Rumors are still rife among Nigerians that the vaccine is 

unsafe, and several religious leaders continue to lecture 

on its dangers. Another mass vaccine boycott could lead 

to further polio spread, derailing long-standing 

eradication efforts for good. 

Nigerian health officials contacted by The Associated 

Press declined to comment on the situation. 



Continued from page 50 – Officials say Drug caused 

Nigerian Polio 

"Convincing the Nigerians to take even more of this 

vaccine will be a tough sell," said Dr. Samuel Katz, an 

infectious diseases specialist at Duke University and 

co-inventor of the measles vaccine. 

More than 10 billion polio doses have been given to 

children worldwide, and the vaccine has been credited 

with cutting polio incidence by more than 99 percent 

since 1988. Far more children are paralyzed by the wild 

polio virus than the virus spread by the oral vaccine. 

But no vaccine is risk- free. 

WHO said that changing the vaccination strategy is 

unnecessary. "It would be nice if we had a more stable 

oral polio vaccine, but that's not the way it is today," 

Heymann said. "We will continue working the way we 

have been working because we don't want children to 

be paralyzed anywhere." 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071005/ap_on_he_me/nigeria 

_polio_paradox 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Preventing Polio from 

Becoming a Reemerging 

Disease 

Panel Summary from the 2000 Emerging 

Infectious Diseases Conference in Atlanta, 

Georgia 

Walter R. Dowdle,* Stephen L. Cochi,† Steve 

Oberste,† and Roland Sutter† 

*Task Force for Child Survival and Development, 

Decatur, Georgia, USA; †Centers for Disease Control 

and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA 

The global effort to eradicate polio has become the 

largest public health initiative in history and is 

spearheaded by the World health Organization, Rotary 

International, the Centers for Disease Control and 

Prevention, and UNICEF (United Nations Children's 

Fund). During 1999, extraordinary progress continued, 

with the number of polio-endemic countries declining 

to 30 from 50 in 1998. Of the three poliovirus types, 

poliovirus type 2 has reached the verge of extinction, 

with the only known remaining foci existing in 

northern India. Polio incidence declined to the lowest 

levels ever in 1999, although the number of reported 

cases (7,012) increased slightly due to improvements in 

surveillance and polio outbreaks in Angola and Iraq. 

Existing challenges in the initiative include maintaining 

effective activities, gaining access to children in 

conflict-affected countries, and sustaining political and 

financial support until certification is achieved in 2005. 

Maintaining sufficient supplies of oral polio vaccine 

emerged as an additional challenge during 1999, resulting 

from marked acceleration of immunization activities. The 

public-private sector partnership supporting the initiative 

expanded in 1999 to include the Bill and Melinda Gates 

Foundation, Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation, the 

World Bank, Aventis Pasteur, and De Beers. 

Cessation of Polio Vaccination 

Following certification of polio eradication by the year 

2005 or shortly thereafter, the public health community 

and policy makers will be faced with the decision of how 

and when to stop polio vaccination. The benefits of 

ceasing vaccination are well defined (i.e., annual savings 

of U.S. $1.5 billion in direct global vaccination costs; the 

possibility of directing these savings to other health 

priorities; and eradication of vaccine-associated paralytic 

poliomyelitis cases). The risks are obvious. If poliovirus 

is reintroduced into a susceptible population, a 

catastrophic epidemic of paralytic disease, disability, and 

death could ensue. 

Poliovirus could reemerge through 1) reintroduction of 

poliovirus from a laboratory; 2) prolonged replication in 

immunodeficient patients; and 3) persistent transmission 

of vaccine-derived virus in populations. The probability 

of vaccine-derived poliovirus remaining in circulation is 

impossible to estimate directly. However, the basic 

reproductive number or BRN (derived from proportion 

excreting virus, duration of excretion, virus titer in stool) 

for vaccine-derived poliovirus is lower than for wild-type 

polioviruses (typically between 2 and 5 in industrialized 

countries and 10 and 15 under conditions of poor hygiene 

in tropical countries). Additional data exist from outbreak 

investigations, molecular sequencing of polioviruses, and 

studies of poliovirus persistence following mass 

vaccination campaigns (e.g., Hungary, Finland, and 

Cuba). Although the currently available data are 

encouraging (i.e., decreasing BRN and 3 to 6 months' 

duration of circulation), substantial gaps in knowledge 

still exist, including the probability of continued virus 

circulation in populations with poor hygiene. These gaps 

need to be addressed to ensure that the best available 

scientific data will be available for decision-making. 

Laboratory Containment of Wild Polioviruses 

Global documentation of laboratory containment of 

materials infected or potentially infected with wild 

poliovirus is a key component in the decision to stop 

vaccination. The last smallpox case occurred not in 

Somalia in 1977, but in England in 1978. The virus was 

transmitted through a faulty ventilation system from a 

laboratory to a nearby office, where it infected a person. 

Like smallpox virus, the only remaining sources of wild 



Continued from page 51 – Preventing Polio from becoming 

an Emerging Disease 

virus will be in the laboratories once the virus has been 

eradicated from the natural environment. The reported 

transmission of wild poliovirus from a vaccine 

production facility, presumably through an infected 

worker, to the community underscores the need for 

increased containment once wild poliovirus has been 

eradicated (1). 

Infectious or potentially infectious poliovirus materials 

may be present in a wide range of laboratories, 

including clinical diagnostic, environmental, research, 

and teaching. The types of materials that might contain 

wild poliovirus include clinical (e.g., diagnostic 

specimens or unidentified enterovirus like isolates), 

research (e.g., wild poliovirus strains or derivatives, 

full-length poliovirus RNA, or cDNA containing full 

capsid sequences), and environmental (sewage). 

Because of its high rate of subclinical infections, 

poliovirus may be found in fecal specimens collected 

for other purposes. For example, fecal or sewage 

samples collected in polio-endemic countries for 

nutritional and environmental studies or studies of other 

viral, bacterial, or parasitic diseases may contain wild 

poliovirus. 

The WHO Global Action Plan for Laboratory 

Containment of Wild Polioviruses (2) was published in 

1999. The plan is linked to the eradication progress. In 

the preeradication phase (the present), laboratories are 

required to implement safe handling procedures for 

materials infected or potentially infected with 

poliovirus (biosafety level [BSL] 2/polio). Countries 

must establish national inventories of laboratories 

holding such materials. Completion of pre-eradication 

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5144a2.htm 

activities is required before a region can be certified 

polio-free. The post-eradication phase (high containment) 

begins 1 year after identification of the world's last case. 

At that time, laboratories holding wild poliovirus stocks 

and potentially infectious materials must either place all 

materials under appropriate biosafety conditions, transfer 

important virus isolates to WHO interim repositories, or 

render all wild poliovirus materials noninfectious. 

Documentation of containment compliance by all regions 

is required for global certification of poliovirus 

eradication. For countries that intend to stop all 

poliovirus vaccination, work with materials that could 

cause infection with wild poliovirus must be conducted 

under BSL 4 containment. High containment (BSL 

3/polio) will be required for work with vaccine-derived 

viruses. 

High-level political involvement and multi-sector 

commitments, including departments of health, defense, 

education, environment, and private industry are essential 

to achieving and maintaining global containment of wild 

poliovirus. 

References 

Mulders MN, Reimerink JHJ, Koopmans MPG, van Loon 

AM, van der Avoort HGAM. Genetic analysis of wild 

type poliovirus importation into The Netherlands (1979- 

1995). J Infect Dis 1997;176:617-24. 

World Health Organization. Global action plan for 

laboratory containment of wild polioviruses. Geneva, 

Switzerland: World Health Organization; 1999. 

WHO/V&B/99.32. 

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no3_supp/dowdle.htm 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 


Laboratory Surveillance for Wild and Vaccine-Derived Polioviruses --- 

Worldwide, January 2006--June 2007 

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5637a4.htm 


Mission Statement 

Our aim at The African Traditional Herbal 

Research Clinic is to propagate and promote the 

awareness in Afrikan peoples at home and abroad of 

their health, biodiversity, history and cultural 

richness. We gather pertinent information on these 

issues and disseminate these freely to our people in 

Uganda, the rest of the continent, and anywhere in 

the Diaspora where Afrikans are located…. One of 

the main ingredients for increasing poverty, sickness, 

exploitation and domination is ignorance of one's 

self, and the environment in which we live. 

Knowledge is power and the forces that control our 

lives don't want to lose control, so they won't stop at 

anything to keep certain knowledge from the people. 

Therefore, we are expecting a fight and opposition to 

our mission. However, we will endeavor to carry 

forward this work in grace and perfect ways. 

“Where there is no god, there is no culture. 

Where there is no culture, there is no 

indigenous knowledge. Where there is no 

indigenous knowledge, there is no history. 

Where there is no history, there is no science 

or technology. The existing nature is made 

by our past. Let us protect and conserve our 

indigenous knowledge.” 

☻☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

C ALENDAR OF E VENTS 

SPECIAL EVENT: CLINIC OPENING 

PLACE: AFRIKAN TRADITIONAL HERBAL RESEARCH CLINIC 

TIME: 

Afrikan Traditional Herbal Research Clinic 

1175A Mukalazi Road, P.O. Box 29974 

Bukoto, Kampala, Uganda East Africa 

Phone: +256 (0) 782 917 902 

Email: clinic@blackherbals.com 

ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED 

Herb of the Month 

Momordica Charantia (Cerasee) 

COMMON NAMES: Karela, balsam apple, paoka, madian 

apple, mexicaine, caprika, achochilla 

Cerasee is native to Africa, the Middle East and the 

Mediterranean area. Extracts of various plant parts of the 

bitter melon, including the leaf, fruit and seeds have been 

investigated and found to be pharmacologically active 

against microbes. A leaf, and a fruit, in addition to whole 

plant extracts have been found to have antimicrobial and 

antiviral activities. Ribosome-inactivating proteins have 

been found to be active against both herpes and polio 

viruses. 

HEp-2 cells were infected with herpes simplex virus-1 

(HSV-1) or with poliovirus I in the presence of plant 

proteins which inactivate ribosomes in cell-free systems, 

while exerting scarce effect on whole cells. Ribosomeinactivating 

proteins used were gelonin, from the seeds of 

Gelonium multiflorum, an inhibitor from the seeds of 

Momordica charantia, dianthin 32, from the leaves of 

Dianthus caryophyllus (carnation), and PAP-S, from the 

seeds of Phytolacca americana (pokeweed). All proteins 

tested had the following effects: 1. They reduced viral 

yield; 2. They decreased HSV-1 plaque-forming efficiency; 

3. They inhibited protein synthesis more in infected than in 

uninfected cells. These results strongly suggest that 

ribosome-inactivating proteins impair viral replication by 

inhibiting protein synthesis in virus-infected cells, in which 

presumably they enter more easily than in uninfected cells. 

L. Foà-Tomasi, G. Campadelli-Fiume, L. Barbieri and F. Stirpe; 

Effect of ribosome-inactivating proteins on virus-infected cells. 

Inhibition of virus multiplication and of protein synthesis; 

Archives of Virology; Vol. 71:4. December 1982, pp. 323-332; 

http://www.springerlink.com/content/mr11023294711m36/ 

☻☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

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Street Number and Name 

City, Country, etc. 

BULK RATE 

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PERMIT NO. 

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