A renewed drive to immunise Nigerian children living amidst the world's worst outbreak of polio has run into fierce opposition from parents and Islamic teachers, health workers here told AFP.
As the five-day campaign, launched on Saturday to great fanfare, approached its end, officials in the northern city of Kano admitted they would not hit its target of vaccinating four million under-fives against the crippling disease.
"I worked on Saturday and Sunday but nobody I met would allow me to vaccinate his child. The first day I went to 16 houses and at each house I was rebuffed by the parents," said auxiliary health worker Shamsuddeen Falalu.
"In some of the houses I was told it was in my own interest never to come back and wherever I passed carrying the polio kit I was booed by children who followed me chanting derisive songs," the 18-year-old told AFP on Tuesday.
In August last year, Kano State halted its participation in a UN-led global campaign to eradicate polio through mass immunisation after some Islamic radical leaders accused the United States of lacing the vaccine with anti-fertility agents.
The region rapidly found itself at the epicentre of the fastest growing outbreak of the disease ever recorded and cases began to spread across Nigeria -- Africa's most populous country with 130 million people -- and beyond.
On Saturday, Kano's Governor Ibrahim Shekarau announced that local tests on a new batch of vaccine imported from Indonesia, a mainly-Muslim country, had proved the treatment safe. He called on families to protect their kids.
But this week health workers found that much suspicion remains.
"I began the second day by going to an islamiyya school (Islamic school) thinking that since the governor had spoken well of the vaccine the day before the teacher would allow me to vaccinate the children," Falalu said.
"But as I came close the teacher motioned to me to turn back and before I said anything the kids took to their heels. I just went back and dumped the kit in the office and never went out again," he added.
Fellow vaccination worker Saadiya Bello found the same story in the rural community of Kura, 20 kilometres (12 miles) outside Kano city, where some parents said they feared the vaccine could infect the children with the HIV/AIDS virus.
"I was shocked when parents told me not to immunise their children because the vaccine could make their children barren and also contains HIV virus. Some of them were rude to me, calling me an American agent," Bello said.
"Only a few people allowed their children to take the vaccine and in the course of my interview with these parents I realized that they had never believed in those rumours against the vaccine in the first place. "My colleagues recounted similar experiences in the areas they were posted for the vaccination campaign. With this attitude the four million target is really a joke, it can't be realized," he added.
Kano State's Information Commissioner, Yusuf Garba, conceded that it had been ambitious to expect the people of Kano to immediately embrace vaccination after the exposure for almost a year to conflicting messages over its safety.
"I believe this exercise will provide a launching pad for more successful results in subsequent campaigns," he said. "We know we can't meet the target of immunizing four million children this time but if we can only achieve 35 per cent coverage we are ok, and it means we are getting somewhere," Garba said.
"We intend to start extensive mass sensitization as soon as the immunisation exercise is over with a view to creating public awareness," he said.
Any further delays to successful vaccination in Nigeria will come as a severe blow to the UN eradication campaign, which still aims to stamp out polio once and for all by the end of the year.
On Tuesday, the World Health Organisation's chief official fighting polio said that Nigeria's renewed cooperation would be key. "It appears to us that polio eradication is on target . The last remaining obstacle to polio immunisation has been removed," David Heymann said.