Dear Log,
«Until last year, an international campaign to rid the planet of polio had proceeded almost flawlessly. Numbers of cases had dropped from more than 300,000 a year to fewer than a thousand. A disease that in the 1990s was found in 125 nations was confined to a few pockets of Asia, and to Africa where most cases are concentrated into parts of Nigeria, Niger and Egypt."Cleric" is a very special word we use for Moslem priests. It means "priest", but they say they're not priests, so we have to use a word that means "priest" without being the word "priest".But in 2003, anti-Western hostility erupted among Muslims in northern Nigeria's Kano region. They claimed vaccines were tainted with HIV and poisons to make women infertile and refused to cooperate with doctors.
'All kinds of rumours were going around,' said Jonathan Majiyagbe, a Kano resident and a past president of Rotary International which has played a key role in funding the polio eradication programme. 'Some clerics made all sorts of wild accusations.'»
If this makes sense to you, then congratulations, you now live in the 13th century. A faith-healer will be by in the morning to cast out the demons from your vaccinations.
