Nigeria's mainly Muslim state of Kano resumed polio immunisations on Saturday after a 10-month ban which health workers said was caused by authorities pandering to radicals.
Kano state governor Ibrahim Shekarau kicked off the restart on Saturday by vaccinating his infants in public in the village of Takai, 80 km (50 miles) east of the state capital city of Kano.
Muslim leaders had pushed for the boycott saying the vaccines were part of a Western plot to spread HIV and infertility.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and other international organisations said the ban had helped spread the crippling virus across Nigeria and into 10 other countries that had eradicated polio.
"The government should have stopped these radicals in their pulpits," said Yahaya Abdulkadir, director of Almu Memorial private hospital in Kano city, which offered vaccines throughout the state government's boycott.
Politicians bowed to pressure from Islamic radicals because of their growing popularity in Nigeria's second largest city, he said, which is also the centre of Islamic activism in the country, divided equally between Christians and Muslims.
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