18 May, 2005 14:40 GMT
Sixty-one percent of Yemeni children are not vaccinated against the disease, and WHO plans to launch a vaccination campaign May 30.
The number of confirmed polio cases has reached 83 in Yemen, a country that was believed to have been free of the disease until last month, the UN health agency said Tuesday.
Hashem al-Zein of the
World Health Organization said 411 possible cases were also being examined and told reporters that 67 of the confirmed cases are in the Red Sea port city of Hudaydah. WHO has labeled polio's spread to Yemen "a major epidemic."
Sixty-one percent of Yemeni children are not vaccinated against the disease, and WHO plans to launch a vaccination campaign May 30, al-Zein said.
Yemen is one of 16 previously polio-free countries that have reported new cases since 2003, after a vaccine boycott in Nigeria was blamed for causing an outbreak that spread the disease to other countries.
Hard-line Islamic clerics in northern Nigeria led the immunization boycott, claiming the polio vaccine was part of a U.S.-led plot to render Nigeria's Muslims infertile or infect them with AIDS. Vaccination programs restarted in Nigeria in July 2004 after local officials ended the 11-month boycott.
Polio comes from dirty water and usually infects young children, attacking the nervous system and causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and sometimes death.
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