ATLANTA (The Cox News Service) -- The numerous outbreaks of previously unrecognized diseases that occurred during the past two years were no anomaly, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Sunday evening: They are a "new normal" for which governments are not yet prepared.

Speaking at the opening session of the Fourth International Conference on Emerging Infectious Disease in Atlanta, Dr. Julie L. Gerberding said that detection, drug development, public communication and international scientific cooperation must all be accelerated if disease threats are to be contained.

Gerberding enumerated recent major outbreaks ranging from the anthrax attacks to the spread of antibiotic resistance and West Nile virus and the emergence of monkeypox and SARS.

"We look on this period and think, 'Please, can we get back to the good old days,"' she said. "My message today is: The good old days are gone. This is the new normal." The four-day conference is a biannual scientific meeting, sponsored by the CDC and the American Society for Microbiology and attended this year by more than 1,700 medical, public health and veterinary scientists. Attendees are scheduled to discuss the SARS epidemic and the ongoing outbreak of avian influenza in Asia, which has killed 22 humans and caused the slaughter of 100 million poultry and other birds thus far.

Haunting the discussion of new health threats, though, is the unexpected re-emergence of polio, which experts thought was almost conquered. The 15-year campaign to eradicate polio from the world, which is already four years past its hoped-for end date, has been stalled in Western Africa by political and religious opposition.

Despite those setbacks, a World Health Organization official said the disease will be eliminated.

"Polio eradication will be completed," said Dr. David Heymann, chief of the WHO polio effort. "It will be completed this year, or early next year." A step backward The $3 billion eradication effort is a joint project of the CDC, WHO, UNICEF and Rotary International with financial support from the World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aid organizations and individual governments. It began in 1988, when there were more than 350,000 cases of polio diagnosed per year in 125 countries. By 2003, diagnoses had dropped dramatically, to 748 new cases per year in six countries: Afghanistan, Egypt, Niger, Nigeria, India and Pakistan.

During 2003, however, the international campaign concentrated its funding and personnel on those six countries. Without the additional assistance, developing-world countries that had been declared "polio-free" were forced by lack of funds to stop further vaccination.

Children who were born after the vaccinations stopped thus were vulnerable to any recurrence of the disease. It did recur. Since mid-2003, polio has spread from Nigeria -- which has half of the remaining cases -- to eight other African countries that had already vanquished the disease: Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Ivory Coast.

Polio has persisted in Nigeria because provincial governments in the Islamic north of the country, chiefly in Kano Province, have refused to allow vaccination campaigns. The stoppage, combined with the spread to areas that were polio-free, has led to fears that the entire international campaign may be at risk.

Rumored adulteration Political and religious leaders in northern Nigeria claim the vaccine has been adulterated with the AIDS virus or with contraceptive drugs.

Because the vaccine is given to toddlers, the supposed adulteration has been portrayed as a Western secular attack intended to kill or harm Islamic children.

In fact, say those familiar with the situation, the vaccine is being used as a bargaining chip in a struggle between provincial leaders and the federal government over how much local political control will be allowed.

Independent tests performed for the Nigerian federal government showed no adulterants, Heymann said.

Those results were rejected by Kano's leadership. In an attempt to break the impasse, the Nigerian federal government allowed Kano to arrange for its own tests and to conduct a fact-finding mission to Islamic countries where vaccination was not challenged.

The tests and mission were to have been concluded 10 days ago but were not completed in time. Kano and one other state, Zamfara, abstained from the campaign.

"We are fairly confident that by mid-March there will be progress," Heymann said. "We believe that the obstacle will be lifted and that then there will be vaccination in all parts of Nigeria."

Copyright 2004 The Cox News Service. All rights reserved.