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Nigeria Polio Boycott is 'Unforgivable'

A senior United Nations official has condemned four Nigerian states for refusing to take part in a mass immunisation drive against polio.

"It is unforgivable to allow still more children to be paralysed because of... baseless rumours," said UN Children's Fund head Carol Bellamy.

Some Muslim clerics say the vaccine is a western plot to make women infertile.

The governor of one of the boycotting states has said the spread of the disease was "a lesser evil".

"It is a lesser of two evils to sacrifice two, three, four, five, even 10 children (to polio) than allow hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of girl-children likely to be rendered infertile," Kano state Governor Ibrahim Shekarau told the AP news agency.

The mainly Muslim states of Bauchi, Niger and Zamfara have also refused to take part in this week's vaccination campaign.

But Ms Bellamy insisted that: "Nigerian leaders must take this opportunity now or answer to their children."

UN agencies have been giving polio drops to some 60m children in 10 West and Central African countries, as part of their goal to eradicate polio by the end of next year.

Northern Nigeria is at the centre of a resurgence of the disease and accounts for almost half of new cases worldwide.

A new case of polio has been reported in Ivory Coast, after more than three years of being polio-free.

The World Health Organization is investigating whether it is the same strain of the disease as that found in Nigeria.

It has already spread to seven of Nigeria's neighbours.

[source: BBC Online. For the full story, go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3488806.stm]

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