►January 18, 2004 - Nigerian state upholds ban on polio vaccinations - AP via The Times of India - "Officials of a heavily Islamic northern Nigerian state said Saturday they wouldn't lift a ban on polio immunizations, after local tests failed to assuage fundamentalists' fears that the doses contain ingredients to render Muslims infertile."

►January 17, 2004 - Fanatics declare war on vaccines - The Daily News - "Northern Nigeria has been swept by a wave of Islamic fundamentalism. Muslim clerics have been urging people not to take the polio vaccine, which they say makes girls sterile...They also allege that the vaccine is contaminated by HIV, all as part of an American-abetted plot to control the population of the Third World and especially the number of Muslims...Much of this is driven by sheer anti-U.S. spite. Several Muslim leaders told a Boston Globe reporter they knew nothing was wrong with the vaccine but were willing to risk crippling children because they hated the United States so."

►January 16, 2004 - Are fears over polio vaccine valid? - The World Health Organisation (WHO) is accusing Nigeria of frustrating efforts to eradicate polio. - BBC - "Join the BBC's Africa Live debate Wednesday, 21 January at 1630 & 1830GMT."

►January 16, 2004 - 6 Nations to Intensify Polio Vaccinations (requires registration or subscription) - The New York Times - "Health ministers from the six countries where polio is now spreading said yesterday that they would intensify efforts to immunize 250 million children against the crippling disease by the end of this year...If they succeed, they would move up the World Health Organization's goal by one year."

►January 16, 2004 - Immunisation drive could wipe out polio by end of 2004 - The Guardian, UK - "Polio, which used to kill and disable many thousands of children every year, could be eradicated by the end of 2004 in one final last ambitious push to immunise 250 million children several times each, the head of the World Health Organisation's campaign said yesterday...'We really do have a one-time opportunity to get it finished,' said Bruce Aylward, its global coordinator. 'The goal is to finish it by the end of 2004, but we may still be mopping up at the beginning of 2005...If we are still dealing with widescale transmission in 2005, the world will have squandered that opportunity.'"

►January 16, 2004 - Polio Eradication Under Gun - Atlanta Journal-Constitution via www.immunizationinfo.org (abstract) - "The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that to eradicate polio entirely from the planet, at least 250 million children in several high-risk areas must be vaccinated at least three times during 2004, lest the 15-year program to eliminate the disease be for nothing."

►January 15, 2004 - Polio Vaccine: the Great Deception - This Day (Lagos) - "Not too long ago, Professor Hussein Akande Abdulkareem of the Lagos State University gave a public to the Nigerian Council of Islamic Scholars lecture which was widely publicized in Nigerian newspapers. In the lecture, a lot of disturbing and misleading issues concerning the polio vaccine and the process of vaccination in general which could jeopardize the global polio vaccination programme in Nigeria were raised. If a Nigerian Biochemist in the 21st century could be claiming that vaccines could not be relied upon to boost the human immune system 205 years after Edward Jenner discovered the concept of vaccine and vaccination, it is rather unfortunate. It portrays the speed with which we are developing backwards."

►January 12, 2004 - Supreme Court upholds secret detentions - MSNBC - "(The court) Rejected an appeal from St. Louis University in a case involving a polio vaccine. The university was ordered in 1991 to pay $16 million to the family of a baby who contracted polio and was paralyzed after receiving vaccine. The university tried to recover the money from the government and American Cynamid Co., the vaccine maker. The university claimed the vaccine Orimune, which was given to Danny Callahan, violated government regulations. The case is St. Louis University v. American Cynamid Co., 03-557."