GENEVA, Jan. 12 -- Polio cases rose by more than half worldwide last year after a vaccine boycott in Nigeria led to a resurgence of the disease across Africa, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
The number of cases in 2004 reached 1,185, compared with 784 in 2003, the U.N. agency said.
Most of the cases were in Africa -- largely in Nigeria, the continent's most populous nation. Hard-line Islamic clerics in Nigeria's northern state of Kano led the immunization boycott, claiming that the polio vaccine was part of a U.S.-led plot to render Muslims infertile or infect them with the AIDS virus.
The boycott triggered an outbreak across the continent, infecting children in formerly polio-free countries and hurting WHO-led attempts to eradicate the crippling disease by Dec. 31, 2005.
"It's going to take months to deal with the effects," said Sona Bari, a spokeswoman for WHO's polio eradication initiative.
During the boycott, the Nigerian-rooted virus spread to neighboring Benin, Chad and Cameroon, as well as eight other countries.
Vaccination programs restarted in Nigeria in July after local officials ended their 11-month boycott.
