POLIO UPDATE

A crusade against polio vaccinations in northern Nigeria sharpened recently when nine women who administered vaccines were shot dead and their clinics torched. Nigerian authorities arrested two journalists and a cleric for allegedly inciting the attack. The two had aired a radio show contending that the polio vaccine program was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That remains a common belief in the last three countries that still harbor the crippling disease: Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In December, nine polio workers were killed in Pakistan, and the U.N. suspended the vaccine program there.