MicrobeWorld

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has made an emergency appeal for millions of dollars to fight a new polio outbreak across Africa. “Polio is spreading again, including in countries such as Uganda which had been polio-free for more than a decade,” said Dr. Tamman Aloudat, who is in charge of health emergencies for the federation. Despite more than 20 years of eradication efforts, two strains of polio have spread out from northern Nigeria and northern India — both places where many Muslims have resisted vaccines because of rumors that vaccine efforts are a Western plot to sterilize them.