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| Arabia |
| Mecca pilgrims could be spreading polio, experts fear: |
| 2005-02-12 |
| Polio apparently reached Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Islam's holy city, just before the annual pilgrimage by 2 million Muslims last month, and World Health Organization officials now fear that the disease may be spreading around the world, carried by returning pilgrims. In crowded nations with spotty vaccination coverage like Bangladesh and Indonesia, "there could be substantial consequences," Dr. Bruce Aylward, coordinator of the health organization's Global Polio Eradication Initiative, said in an interview from Geneva. A spokesman at the Saudi Embassy in Washington said his country had feared the arrival of polio this year and started vaccinating 800,000 people in September, hoping to head it off before the height of the hajj, or pilgrimage, in late January. Saudi Arabia had been polio-free since 1995, but two cases were found late last year. The first was in Jidda, the port city 40 miles from Mecca where most pilgrims disembark. The patient was a Sudanese girl who became paralyzed just after arriving. The second, more worrisome case was confirmed just Thursday. It was a 5-year-old Nigerian boy who developed paralysis on Dec. 15. What made it troubling, Aylward said, was that his family had lived for several years in an illegal encampment on the outskirts of Mecca, so he must have caught a strain circulating in Saudi Arabia. Spotting new outbreaks in far-flung countries will still take weeks, experts said. Paralysis affects only about 1 in 200 carriers of the virus, symptoms can take up to 35 days to emerge, pilgrims traveling by bus or boat can take weeks to get home, and epidemiological reporting in poor countries is often slipshod. "You want to be well into March before you breathe a sigh of relief," Aylward said. The virus lives in the intestine and spreads through fecal-oral contact, so anything from changing a diaper to sharing a food dish or swimming in contaminated water can transmit it. Polio vaccination was not required for pilgrims. Even if it had been required, thousands arrive illegally, and many legal visitors carry forged immunization records, said the Saudi Embassy spokesman, Nail al-Jubeir. "We have to trust the health services of the countries they come from," he said. "We can't give everyone blood tests." Vaccinations were required for meningococcal meningitis and, in some cases, yellow fever. Polio has been spreading from northern Nigeria since 2003, when vaccination campaigns there halted for months after Muslim imams and local politicians spread rumors that the vaccine could make women sterile, transmit AIDS or was made with pork products. It took until last summer for world health officials and clerics from other countries to get Nigerian Muslims to accept a vaccine made in Indonesia. Most cases from that outbreak have been in the largely Muslim Sahel, the band of arid land south of the Sahara from Mali to Ethiopia. Pockets elsewhere are also mostly in Muslim areas -- Pakistan, northern India, Afghanistan and Egypt. Each case of paralysis implies that many more virus carriers are nearby. Most victims suffer symptoms no more serious than those of flu, but even people with no symptoms can pass the virus. In 1988, when polio was endemic in 125 countries, the annual assembly of the health ministers of all nations in Geneva declared their intent to eradicate it by 2000. That target was missed, but $3 billion in vaccination campaigns drove the disease back until it existed in only six countries by the end of 2003. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #6 Insh'Allah, bro'...... |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2005-02-12 12:13:14 PM |
| #5 but $3 billion in vaccination campaigns drove the disease back until it existed in only six countries by the end of 2003 Now, if we can affect the immigration policies of those six countries for expediting the immigration of Muslims, we'd have something. |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-02-12 10:24:59 AM |
| #4 Saudi Arabia "started vaccinating 800,000 people in September". Sounds like they were a little bit behind the times themselves. National health care is my guess. |
| Posted by: Tom 2005-02-12 10:22:53 AM |
| #3 I definitely think it's a Zionist plot myself. And so do they. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2005-02-12 9:50:45 AM |
| #2 Nature's way of saying "Enough is enough." |
| Posted by: gromgorru 2005-02-12 8:07:10 AM |
| #1 Polio, and all of the other goodies from the Islamic cesspool, converge on Mekkah and do their magic upon the faithful. Nature's Way of saying slow down and smell the camel dung. The prayer rugs, furnishings, etc. in the Grand Mosque are 14th Century muzzy population control devices. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-02-12 4:41:32 AM |