African Country Threatens to Jail Parents for Skipping Polio Vaccination

Anthony Gucciardi
NaturalSociety
August 1, 2011

Parents who do not allow their children to be administered the polio vaccine (Read: 78 Percent of Pakistani Children with Polio were Given Polio Vaccines) are now facing jail time for defying a government order in one of Africa’s most populous nations. Tajuddeen Gambo, the permanent secretary of the Kano state health ministry, said that Nigeria has a law that punishes parents who do not succumb to government demands to vaccinate their children.

News24 reports:

“Polio immunisation is part of health care,” Gambo said.

Kano state is located at the heart of Nigeria’s impoverished and Muslim-dominated north where polio vaccines have been met with resistance by a minority, but health officers say that minority is enough to compromise the entire door-to-door campaign.

“When they come to my house, I will tell them there are no children in this house,” says a 45-year-old politician in the village of Dungurawa, just outside the city of Kano.

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