Nigeria battles polio epidemic
Pastor Dale Morgan
Nigeria battles polio epidemic*
POSTED: 0340 GMT (1140 HKT), September 15, 2006
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- On one side of a car stuck in the legendary Lagos
traffic, a man peers hopefully in the window, his limp legs supported by
crutches.
On the other, a crippled child scratches at the glass with a scrawny
hand. Two more men, their shriveled limbs tucked underneath them, scoot
through clouds of black exhaust fumes on homemade skateboards begging
for small change.
These are the victims of Nigeria's crumbling health care system,
crippled by polio and abandoned by the government. With no hope of work,
the thousands of polio survivors are a familiar sight in Nigerian
streets, weaving through traffic on tiny homemade skateboards, cheap
plastic flip-flops on their hands.
Polio has been on the rise in Nigeria, in part due to objections to
vaccinations from the country's Muslim population who thought it would
make children infertile. The vaccination campaign was suspended in 2003
and 2004 because of the objections. More than 100 cases were reported
last August alone, up from a low of 28 cases recorded for the whole of 2000.
While the international community is spending $90 million on Nigeria's
polio eradication program this year, there is little support for those
that have survived the disease. The Nigerian Health Ministry failed to
respond to repeated requests for comment on support for survivors,
although they have previously highlighted money spent on polio vaccines.
"There's no assistance, we have to go begging. We don't want to," said
Zakariah Mohammed, a 25-year-old with a neatly clipped mustache.
Although his legs are bound to his skateboard with electrical cable, he
still plays football on the weekend with other polio survivors and says
he's willing to work if anyone would offer him a job.
"I don't know what this government does with the money, but I haven't
seen any share for handicapped people," he said, as a Hummer jeep raced
by with a convoy of police cars, sirens screaming.
Nigeria is oil rich, but little of that wealth seems to trickle out of
the hands of powerful politicians to the masses. Government corruption
and underdevelopment means Africa's largest crude exporter has no
welfare program, no public health service and few jobs.
Mohammed is a Muslim from the northern city of Kano, where the debate
over the safety of polio vaccination raged the strongest. Oliver
Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, says that the
area will be seeing a dramatic increase in cases for the next few years,
and worries that it could reinfect the south of Nigeria, where the
disease is under control, or neighboring countries like Cameroon or Niger.
The outbreak in Nigeria also seeded polio outbreaks in almost two dozen
other countries, including places as far away as Indonesia, setting back
global attempts to eradicate the disease.
"The political leadership and civic leadership did not engage with the
vaccination program," Rosenbauer said. "We must have that support in
order to improve the quality of the campaign."
Ademola Olalekon, a 30-year-old swaying on crutches with a newspaper
tucked under one arm, remembers being able to run before he got sick
when he was four. He helps support his three children by begging while
his wife works in the marketplace.
"The biggest problem is the government. Sometimes they say they don't
want to see beggar, arrest us, take all our money," he said. "Sometimes
they will come, lock you up for three, four months."
The last time he was arrested, Olalekon says, he was imprisoned in an
insane asylum. "Conditions there are very bad. There's dirty water, 20
people per room, one mattress between five, everyone deaf, crippled or mad."
"If you attempt to run away, they catch you and beat you, maybe kill
you. They put the bodies in the" lagoon, he said.
Four law enforcement agencies patrol further up the road. The men and
women working this intersection all look out for each other. If one is
arrested, everyone will contribute to bail. It can take months to save
up enough to release a friend, pennies at a time, but Olalekon said no
one shirks their duties. In 12 years, he has been taken four times and
knows it will probably happen again.
The men typically make around $2 a day. Although barely enough to
support life in the city, it's still more than most Nigerians have to
live on.
The poverty means younger beggars like Abubakr Mustafa, the child
crawling between the swerving cars, are sometimes called on to support
their families instead of the other way around. He looks 10 but says he
is 16. The toenails on one twisted foot have been almost entirely worn
away from going barefoot on the rough roads. His shorts are ragged.
"I want to go to school but there is no money," he says in Hausa, his
soft voice nearly drowned by the roar of the traffic. "My father is a
motorbike taxi driver and there are six in my family."
Because of his youth, Abubakr does slightly better than the other
beggars, making the rough equivalent of $3 per day. It's enough to buy
food, contribute to the rent and pay transport so he can beg in the
richer areas of the city like Ikoyi, where government officials and
businessmen live behind high walls and barbed wire. He dreams of being
able to drive around in one of the gleaming cars that fly past him.
"I want to be a businessman," he says, picking at a bleeding scab on his
knee. "You don't need to walk tall for that."
"But for now, this is the only thing I can do."