Governor Ibrahim Shekarau of Kano state said yesterday that the refusal of his state government to accept the administration of polio vaccine on Kano indigenes had nothing to do with religion or politics, but based purely on scientific factors.In an interview with State House correspondents, the governor ruled out sentiments in his decisions that questioned the authenticity of the polio vaccine. The state is the only state in Nigeria where there are still doubts on the purity of the vaccine.
He explained the circumstances that motivated his reasons saying it was based on the outcome of a scientific report that confirmed that the said polio vaccine had impurities that could cause infertility on the girl child. Now as a responsible government, we have to address the issue.
It is either that you allow the controversy to continue without addressing it and then the entire health programme will collapse or you single out theone in question and address it, and this is exactly what we did in Kano. I said we don’t want to work on sentiment. It is not religious issue, it is not political, but somethingthat you need to verify scientifically. So we set up a technical committee of about 15 professions in all kind of fields in the science: Pharmacology, pharmacy, physicians and so on. We asked them to go and address this issue. They had public hearing, they received all kinds of literature, for and against and they went into the laboratory.
They conducted a test, they came out with findings that these vaccines delivered to us in Kano as at that time, was contaminated with the substance which is believed to lead to infertility if injected into thegirl-child up till certain period. We made this report open; it was not a close door thing, very scientific.
We sent our result to the Federal Ministry of Health, and we asked them check and verify. Since then, the controversy has been onand on. Initially the argument was it is totally safe, there is no contamination. But now we’ve got toa point where the federal authorities are now saying yes, we agree it is contaminated, with this substance that leads to infertility, the only thing is that it so insignificant, but you will need several millions of drops to get to that effect. Then we said you are coming.