On one side of the car, a man peers hopefully in the window, his weak legs supported by crutches. A crippled child scratches at the glass on the other side. Two men with shriveled limbs scoot through the traffic jam on homemade skateboards begging for change.
They are victims of Nigeria’s crumbling health-care system, crippled by polio and abandoned by the government. With no hope of work, thousands of polio survivors are a familiar sight in the streets, weaving along on tiny skateboards, cheap plastic flip-flops on their hands.
Polio is on the rise, in part due to objections to vaccine by Nigeria’s Muslims, whose fears that it would make children infertile halted a vaccination campaign in 2003-04. More than 100 cases were confirmed in August alone, up from a low of 28 cases for all of 2000.
While the international community is spending $90 million on Nigeria’s polio eradication program this year, there is little support for crippled survivors of the disease.
“There’s no assistance, we have to go begging. We don’t want to,” said Zakariah Mohammed, a 25-year-old with a neatly clipped mustache.
Although his legs are bound to his skateboard with electrical cable, he plays soccer on the weekend with other polio survivors and says he is willing to work if anyone will hire him.
“I don’t know what this government does with the money, but I haven’t seen any share for handicapped people,” Mohammed said as a Hummer raced by with a convoy of police cars, their sirens screaming.
The Health Ministry failed to respond to repeated requests from The Associated Press seeking comment on what support is provided for polio survivors.
Government corruption
Nigeria is rich in oil, but little of the wealth seems to trickle out of the hands of politicians to the masses. Government corruption and economic underdevelopment mean Africa’s largest crude-oil exporter has no welfare program or public health service and jobs are few.
Mohammed is a Muslim from the northern city of Kano, where the debate over the safety of polio vaccines raged the strongest.
Oliver Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, says the area will see a dramatic increase in cases for the next few years. He worries it could re-infect Nigeria’s south, where the disease is under control, or neighboring countries like Cameroon or Niger.
The outbreak in Nigeria already seeded polio outbreaks in almost two dozen countries, including places as far away as Indonesia, setting back global attempts to eradicate the disease.
“The political leadership and civic leadership did not engage with the vaccination program,” Rosenbauer said. “We must have that support in order to improve the quality of the campaign.”
Ademola Olalekon, 30, swaying on crutches, helps support his three children by begging while his wife works in the marketplace.
“The biggest problem is the government. Sometimes they say they don’t want to see beggars, arrest us, take all our money,” he said. “Sometimes they will come, lock you up for three, four months.”
Nov192006