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Nigeria: Polio vaccine back in the headlines
A report in an American medical journal that children in northern Nigeria have been infected with polio by the vaccine designed to prevent it have raised fears that Nigeria's already lagging polio prevention efforts could be further delayed.
Such vaccine-derived outbreaks have occurred previously in other parts of the world, usually in regions where there is low polio immunisation coverage, but the 69 cases recorded in Nigeria are the largest on record, the scientists said in the study.
The finding could be a “serious setback” for the global polio eradication campaign, because it is occurring in a region where rumours about vaccine safety “derailed vaccination efforts” several years ago, scientists warned in the study, released on 28 September by the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in its publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly.
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