GENEVA, Jan 13 (AFP) - Eight African states have agreed to a massive series of anti-polio vaccination campaigns aimed at halting transmission of the virus by the end of 2005, the World Health Organisation said Thursday.
Health ministers from eight African countries affected by a resurgence of polio agreed to an eradication strategy involving mass immunisations in 25 countries during a meeting with WHO officials, the UN's health agency said in a statement.
The strategy, which is due to gain wider support from the rest of the African Union at the organisation's summit in Abuja, Nigeria, on January 29, will also involve boosted surveillance for polio, the UN's health agency said.
"We the ministers of the eight most polio affected countries of Africa, together with the global polio partners, commit to further intensifying polio eradication activities with the goal of ending transmission by the end of 2005," the ministers said in a joint declaration.
The WHO had invited the countries -- Niger, Nigeria, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, Sudan, and Chad -- to the meeting in Geneva because of growing concern about the polio epidemic there.
The number of polio cases worldwide grew last year, mainly in Africa, according to provisional data from the WHO.
About 85 percent (1,037) of the 1,185 cases recorded worldwide so far for 2004 occurred in an area stretching across Africa from Nigeria to Sudan. There were 784 polio cases in the world in 2003.
The WHO blamed the surge on an 11-month ban on a polio vaccine in Nigeria until July 2004, which also allowed transmission to neighbouring countries where there were low immunisation rates.
Despite the immunisation of 80 million children in Nigeria and other countries since the ban was lifted by Nigerian authorities, the WHO said the epidemic is only just being reined in.
In Ivory Coast, Sudan, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic and Chad, polio had regained a foothold last year.
The polio virus has been circulating among the population in those countries for six months, formally re-establishing transmission there, the WHO said.
Sudan and Ivory Coast were also areas of concern because internal conflicts in both countries hampered monitoring and immunisation of children.
In Sudan, the number of cases accelerated from none to 112 within nine months, according to the UN's health agency.
Sudan's government said Wednesday it had issued an order to halt all military operations in the strife torn Darfur region during a nationwide three-day polio vaccination period.
The global number of polio cases has been driven down from were 350,000 in 1988.
But the WHO's target of eradicating the disease by 2000 was narrowly missed, and the recent surge in Africa, as well as clusters in Asia, have frustrated further attempts to stifle the virus.
01/13/2005 17:16 GMT - AFP