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| Africa: West |
| The Fight to end Polio hits the Wall |
| 2004-01-21 |
| In this village of 3,000 people, 12 cars, one college graduate, and no telephones, the final push to erase polio from the earth hit a dead end. The poliomyelitis virus zigzagged down one alley to the next several months ago, almost surely carried along in a fetid ribbon of water polluted with human waste. Children drank from it, splashed in it, rubbed their dirty hands in it, and that was the virus’s opportunity. It infected four of the village’s youngest residents, who lost the use of one or two limbs. The virus thrived here in part because of the usual obstacles to better health care: internal political struggles, misspent money, alleged corruption. But an unusual additional factor came into play in the hamlets along the fault line between Christians and Muslims in West Africa: Local Muslim clerics told villagers to reject the polio vaccine because it was part of an American plot. Thes "Men of God" are willing to condemn their people to the possibility of polio for political points. |
| Posted by:Cheddarhead |
| #3 Can we find a way to give it to one, preferably more, of the "Local Muslim clerics"? Let's see if that changes some tunes. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-1-21 8:56:26 PM |
| #2 Couldn't we just loose Jim and Marlon Perkins on this village? If they can hit a cheetah in the ass with a tranquilizer round, they ought to be able to peg a Nigerian kid with a dart of vaccine. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2004-1-21 8:52:30 PM |
| #1 One way to deal with this sort of ignorant BS is to tell them okay, we won't be immunizing anyone over there any longer. However, there is one catch: people will stay where they are - no one leaves the country, period. If these types don't mind their population being stricken with deadly contagions that are easily stopped with simple immunizations, then fine, suffer among yourselves in silence and don't pass it around to the rest of us. The other alternative is to go in and defang these "clerics" by any means necessary, either directly or by proxy. There's been enough game-playing on the part of Muslim clerics, and it needs to come to a stop, one way or another. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-1-21 5:40:47 PM |