Ted Turner gives $80M to UN fund for Nigeria work

[October 26, 2010]  ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) -- Media mogul Ted Turner announced Monday that he will give $80 million to a United Nations foundation to fight childhood polio and measles in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation.

Speaking in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, Turner said his gift would help further reduce polio rates in Nigeria, home of 150 million people. The nation had 381 new polio infections at this time last year during an outbreak that saw the disease threaten a belt of sub-Saharan nations.

Previously, some northern Muslim religious leaders spread rumors that the vaccine would sterilize children or infect them with AIDS. Now, local foundation and others have convinced clerics the vaccine will not harm children and will prevent them from being like many of the withered-limb beggars standing on street corners throughout Nigeria.

The efforts at vaccinating the young appear to be working so far in oil-rich Nigeria. Statistics show only eight cases reported so far this year.

Turner said continuing to vaccinate Nigeria's children would ensure their health and eradicate the disease from the country.

"Working together, I know we can finish the job on polio," Turner said.

The money will go toward the U.N. Foundation, an organization Turner helped create. About $60 million will go toward purchasing additional vaccines for the country, U.N. Foundation President Timothy Wirth said. The remaining $20 million will go toward efforts to combat measles.

"A former major push in January for measles and polio will be combined," Wirth said. "It will be a major community campaign to try to do the last on the polio and use that same campaign to increase the immunization for measles."

Polio mostly strikes children under 5 and is carried in the feces of the infected and often spread by contaminated water. It usually causes paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and sometimes death.

The disease has dropped by more than 99 percent since the World Health Organization and partners launched an initiative to eradicate it in 1988 through vaccinations. But the numbers of cases -- fewer than 2,000 annually -- have remained at a virtual standstill since 2000. In addition to Nigeria, polio persists in a handful of countries, including Afghanistan, Angola, Chad, India, Pakistan and Sudan.

A billionaire philanthropist, Turner is most known for founding CNN in 1980. He joins Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in fighting polio in Nigeria. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent $120 million on anti-polio efforts in the country.

[Associated Press; By BASHIR ADIGUN]

Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Lagos, Nigeria, contributed to this report.

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