A health worker immunizes a four-year-old boy at Ilashe Island, 25km from the Nigerian capital Lagos.

A polio outbreak in Nigeria was caused by the vaccine designed to stop it, international health officials say, leaving at least 69 children paralyzed.
It is a frightening paradox in a part of the world that already distrusts western vaccines, making it even tougher to stamp out age-old diseases, reported AP.
The outbreak was caused by the live polio virus that is used in vaccines given orally--the preferred method in developing countries because it is cheaper and doesn’t require medical training to dispense.
“This vaccine is the most effective tool we have against the virus, but it’s like fighting fire with fire,“ said Olen Kew, a virologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Outbreaks caused by the oral vaccine’s live virus have happened before. But the continuing Nigerian outbreak is the biggest ever caused by the vaccine. It also follows a nearly yearlong boycott of the vaccine in Africa’s most populous country because of unfounded fears the vaccine was a Western plot to sterilize Muslims.
Officials now worry that the latest vaccine-caused Nigerian outbreak could trigger another vaccine scare.
Experts say such outbreaks only happen when too few children are vaccinated. In northern Nigeria, only about 39 percent of children are fully protected against polio.
The oral polio vaccine contains a weakened version of polio virus. Children who have been vaccinated excrete the virus, and in unsanitary conditions it can end up in the water supply, spreading to unvaccinated children.
In rare instances, as the virus passes through unimmunized children, it can mutate into a form that is dangerous enough to spark new outbreaks.
In 2001, officials reported that 22 children were paralyzed from polio in the Dominican Republic and Haiti in this way. Subsequent vaccine-caused polio outbreaks have occurred in the Philippines, Madagascar, China and Indonesia.
In the West, the polio vaccine is given as a shot and uses an inactivated virus, but that method is more expensive and requires training.

One of Africa’s largest rubbish dumps is harming the health of children living nearby and polluting the Kenyan capital Nairobi, according to a report from the UN.
The study, commissioned by the UN Environment Program (UNEP), based in Nairobi, found that half of 328 children tested near the Dandora dump had amounts of lead in their blood exceeding internationally accepted levels.
Half the children tested were also suffering respiratory diseases, including chronic bronchitis and asthma as a result of exposure to pollutants a statement from the UNEP said.
Located near slums in east Nairobi, the open dump receives about 2,000 tons of the city’s rubbish daily.
While there is an inherent health risk for those living near it, Dandora also provided a valuable, if precarious, lifeline for many residents, according to Al Jazeera.
Rorechi Achieng and her brother collect plastic bags from the dump. They wash them in the polluted river. And work at least eleven hours a day.
The 16-year-old Rorechi uses tiny specs of soap from discarded wrappers to clean plastic bags which she then sells.
It is already having an impact on her health. She says she has developed a cough since she began working on the dump 18 months ago.
Rorechi is not the only one trying to make a living out of the garbage dump. For many of the residents here, it is their only source of income. But the health hazard is not only limited in one area, it flows further downstream with the Nairobi river.
A nearby clinic has treated more than 27,000 people for breathing problems in the last three years and UN researchers say they found high levels of lead in the blood of children here.
“What is most worrying in children is that it affects the development of the brain,“ Njoroge Kimani, an environmental researcher, told Al Jazeera. “Thereby impairing neurophysochological development and the children have low IQ.“

European Union countries agreed to quickly build a continentwide alert system for missing children by linking their national networks, officials said.
EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini said the ministers in charge of policing from the 27-nation union broadly agreed at a meeting in Lisbon to mesh national systems into a European web that could help catch abducted children.
He said crafting legislation to build a wholly new alert system could take years. Instead, the EU officials agreed they would work toward the “interoperability“ of their current national networks.
“We don’t want to build another system but we do want to interconnect national systems“ to address cross-border cases, Frattini said, AP reported.
Portugal, France and Greece already have systems in place, he said, and other member states were preparing theirs. The scheme is based on the “Amber Alert“ system, a notification to the general public, by various media outlets in Canada and in the United States, when police confirmed that a child has been abducted.
Portuguese Justice Minister Alberto Costa, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said cross-border alerts would not be automatic but would be triggered whenever authorities deemed there was a risk of a child being taken to another country.
The United Nations says more than 1 million children are trafficked every year.

When his son Merouane left home one night in April, Kamel Belabed thought the 25-year-old was taking a short road trip. But one of his son’s friends phoned the next day to say that Merouane had left by boat, attempting the hazardous 250 kilometer (150-mile) journey across the Mediterranean from this eastern Algerian city to Sardinia, Italy. Belabed hasn’t heard from his son since.
As he pieced together details of how his son stole away, Belabed came into contact with other Algerian families in similar straits, who were just as desperate to know what happened to their lost children, reported AP.
They are among tens of thousands of would-be migrants who attempt the journey from Africa to Europe each year. Hundreds are known to die annually in the effort, their bodies washing up on shores on both sides of the sea. Many others simply vanish.
Belabed is breaking long-held taboos about discussing the missing migrants, and is demanding answers. He created a network--currently numbering some 40 families--that aims to warn off those planning to leave, and track down those who’ve already gone. In Algeria there are two main illegal emigration routes: From the western province of Oran toward the Spanish coast, and, more recently, from Annaba to Sardinia.
Algerian press reports say that hundreds of illegal migrants have been intercepted by the coast guard this year, including 210 near Annaba in the last three months. Deaths are also common. In a recent case, the Quotidien d’Oran newspaper reported that the bodies of three people had been found off the western Algerian coast.
According to Italian Interior Ministry estimates, 960 people crossed to Sardinia alone in the first eight months of 2007, almost all of them Algerian, while the total number of immigrants arriving illegally by boat on Italian shores over the same period was 12,419. And those are only the officially registered figures.
Italian and Algerian officials have pledged to crack down on the new flow of boats toward Sardinia, with Algeria’s ambassador to Italy, Rachid Marif, promising to speed up the process of identification and repatriation of would-be migrants at a meeting in Rome in August, a statement from the Italian Interior Ministry said.

An Iranian child takes part in Qods International Day Rally in support of Palestinian kids in Tehran.

A growing number of Bangladeshi children continued to languish in jails despite legal bars reinforced by court orders, a report said.
Around 354 children, including 48 girls, were languishing in 57 jails across the country in direct violation of the high court verdict and subsequent government directives to shift them to juvenile correction centers and safe homes, reported Zeenews.com.
As many as 1,212 children, including 188 girls were sent to prisons from January 1 to August 31 in violation of the Children’s Act 1974, under which any under-16 child arrested for a non-bailable offence should be released on bail, even from police stations, the report said.
The provision, however, is hardly being practiced by the police in dealing with cases involving juvenile accused, according to NGO Save the Children, UK.
Ironically, the juvenile correction centers or safe homes appeared to be deserted with 292 inmates against a capacity of 700.
The survey report suggested that 1,024 underage boys and 188 girls were sent to the country’s 57 jails during the first eight months of this year.
According to the National Taskforce on Juvenile Justice, 1,810 children including 341 girls were sent to prisons in 2006.
Section 49 of the Children’s Act stipulates that if any child accused “is not released on bail, the officer-in-charge of the police station shall cause him to be detained in a remand home or a place of safety.“

Some 100 delegates from 16 countries and regions took the center stage as the Global Youth Forum (GYS) opened on Oct. 4 in Shanghai.
The forum will bring to light the current issues facing people with intellectual disabilities and at the same time bring about a string of other activities of the two-week summit, which is held over the course of the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai, Xinhua reported.
“Special Olympics provides one of the greatest platforms in the world for acceptance and inclusion, and the young people participating in the 2007 Youth Summit will play an important role as we work to eliminate stereotypes and change views about the capabilities and gifts of people with intellectual disabilities,“ said Special Olympic’s Chairman Timothy Shriver.
However, for many decades, even in the most developed nations, efforts to promote inclusion and opportunity for people with intellectual disabilities in all respects have met with many barriers, some quite resistant to change.
It has been estimated that there are about 200 million people with intellectual disability in the world, comprising from one to three percent of populations around the world. In China, 9.84 million of its 1.3 billion people are intellectually disabled.
Since early May this year, the kids have been working hard for the summit, harnessing the power of technology in the worldwide campaign to ban the use of the “r“ word (retard) while promoting respect and understanding for persons with intellectual disabilities.

Female students have higher risk of being bullied on the Internet, a study in Australia has found.
The study looked at 518 female students and found that 31 percent were bullied online this year. Most of the victims were aged between 12 and 15, IANS reported.
Cyber bullying is described as worse than face-to-face bullying because it has no geographical boundaries and involves the power of the written word. It has now entered the home environment through email, websites and mobiles.
Marilyn Campbell, psychologist and study author, said: “Victims often think they are to blame. Common thoughts are “Why would they pick on me?“ or “What is wrong with me?“
“We need to teach students that it’s the bullies who need to change their behavior, not the victims.“Clear anti-bullying policies and procedures are needed in schools to reduce bullying, the researcher said.

Nearly 20,000 youths from the eight northeastern states of India are to be recruited for India’s booming IT enabled services and business process outsourcing (ITES-BPO) industry.
According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), the initiative for the recruitment drive is being done with help from the union ministry of development of northeastern region (DoNER).
Nasscom, the apex body of Indian IT and service companies, has created an assessment and certification program called Nasscom Assessment of Competence (NAC) for a common and transparent recruitment process, reported In. news.yahoo.com.
“The ITES-BPO industry is growing at an overwhelming pace and giving a major fillip to the Indian economy. India has established its leadership position globally in the off shoring market and now the availability of skilled manpower is one of the key barriers to the fast growth of the industry,“ Nasscom said.

Over 90 percent of Irish primary schools are operated by the Catholic Church. Those schools, like all the others, are funded by the Department of Education. A massive increase in inward immigration, by all colors and creeds, coupled with oversubscribed schools has led the Irish education system into a serious quandary.
Catholic parents have first claim to enroll their children in most of the schools in Ireland. So, where oversubscription is widespread, unsurprisingly given the population boom, Catholic children will get preference over non-Catholics, reported Independent.ie.
The majority of these ’preferred’ children will thus be of Irish descent and white. The preferential treatment of Catholic children is not illegal, nor should it be; but the inevitable result, where the vast majority of primary schools are Catholic, is racial segregation.
The recent case in Balbriggan highlighted the need for regime change in the running of primary schools. Not unlike many other areas, the schools in Balbriggan were oversubscribed
As a result, about 50 children were unable to gain entry to the local primary schools. Those children were black and were not Catholic.