Nigeria

The Federal Republic of Nigeria is a country in West Africa. It is the most populous country in Africa. It borders Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, Niger in the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the south. Major cities include the capital Abuja, the former capital Lagos, Ibadan, Osogbo, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Kano, Kaduna, Onitsha, Jos, Ilorin, Maiduguri, Bauchi, Sokoto and Benin City. The country's name is unrelated to its African heritage; it was proposed by a Times article in 1897.

Public Health Issues

Polio

One issue which has been complicated by political chaos has been the effort of the World Health Organization to eradicate polio worldwide. Northern Nigeria was the location of half of all documented polio cases in 2003, but Muslim clerics have repeatedly inveighed against the vaccine as an effort by Westerners to sterilize young Nigerian Muslim girls. The national vaccination program was suspended in several states in August of 2003, and the disease nearly quintupled in frequency (119 cases in first quarter 2004, vs. 24 in 2003). By May of 2004, polio was reported to have spread from there to several other African nations which had previously been declared polio-free. On May 18, the state of Kano agreed to resume vaccination programs using vaccines produced in Indonesia, not the US. http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1084907670277

Related Topics:
World Health Organization - Polio - Vaccine - Sterilize - Indonesia - US

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Obstetric Fistula

From a September 28, 2005, New York Times article:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

: Mostly teenagers who tried to deliver their first child at home, the girls failed at labor. Their babies were lodged in their narrow birth canals, and the resulting pressure cut off blood to vital tissues and ripped holes in their bowels or urethras, or both. Now their babies were dead. And the would-be mothers, their insides wrecked, were utterly incontinent.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This is obstetric fistula, a very painful, preventable condition.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Deferred marriage, birth control and caesarian section have all but eliminated this health problem in the developed world. Also from that article:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:[Obstetric fistula] is most concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty and rudimentary health care combine with traditions of home birth and early pregnancy to make women especially vulnerable. In Nigeria alone, perhaps 400,000 to 800,000 women suffer untreated fistulas, says the United Nations.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The United Nations has a campaign to treat and prevent fistulas. See endfistula.org.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~