New Polio Case in Kenya Jeopardizes Eradication

The case, Kenya's first in 22 years, was imported from Somalia and marks a resurgence in East Africa brought on in part by anti-western policies set by Islamic clerics.

Kenya has reported its first polio case in 22 years with the infection of a 3-year-old Somali refugee girl marking a new setback in the global effort to eradicate the crippling disease, officials said Tuesday.

The case brings to 26 the number of countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East that have been reinfected since a 2003 vaccine boycott by hard-line Nigerian Islamic clerics who claimed that the polio vaccine was part of a U.S.-led plot to render Nigerian Muslims infertile or infect them with AIDS.