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Measles infections rose by 670 percent in northern Nigeria's biggest city, Kano, in the first 21 weeks of this year over the same period in 2000, the international medical organisation, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), said on Tuesday.

LAGOS, 23 May (IRIN) -
The results of MSF research at two hospitals in Kano and of a joint
surveillance by MSF and Kano State's Ministry of Health show there were
16,263 cases in the first 21 weeks of 2001 compared to 2,111 cases in the
same period last year. This is an indication of a general rise in the
incidence of the disease in most of northern Nigeria.

"Cases of measles have been rising since November last year," Dr Gebrewold
Petros, medical coordinator of MSF in Nigeria, told IRIN. "They have started
dropping now." While MSF did not provide fatality figures, local newspapers
quoting health officials from different parts of northern Nigeria indicate
that the disease also claimed more lives.

Cases of measles usually increase during the dry, hot season, which begins
around November and lasts until about May. They generally drop with the
onset of the rainy season. Petros said it was not yet possible to say why
incidence of the disease rose dramatically this year. He said all partners
now fighting the epidemic would participate in a study into the reasons for
the increase.

Local and international medical workers involved in immunisation in parts of
Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north have reported some resistance to
vaccination by local people this year. They have attributed it to suspicions
fuelled by some radical Muslims in the area that the vaccines were either
tainted with HIV or were meant to sterilise people under an alleged Western
conspiracy to control African population growth.

[ENDS]

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