GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- Polio has been stamped out in 10 African countries in a major boost to a global campaign to rid the world of the deadly disease, the U.N. health agency said in a report to be published Friday.

The 10 states are the first of 18 previously polio-free countries that reported new cases since 2003 to stamp out the disease, the World Health Organization said. A vaccine boycott in Nigeria was blamed for causing an outbreak that spread the disease across Africa and into the Middle East and as far as Indonesia...

...Hard-line Islamic clerics in northern Nigeria led the 2003 immunization boycott, claiming the polio vaccine was part of a U.S.-led plot to render Nigeria's Muslims infertile or infect them with AIDS.

The Nigerian polio strain spread to 15 African countries before crossing the Red Sea, sparking major epidemics this year in Yemen and Indonesia.

Last month, WHO conceded that it would fail to meet its long-standing target of eradicating polio by the end of this year, saying the disease could be eradicated everywhere but Nigeria in the first six months of next year.

"(Two years) ago the program sort of drove into some real dark days as Nigeria suspended immunization in parts of the north," Aylward said.

Vaccination programs restarted in Nigeria in July 2004 after local officials ended the 11-month boycott. But the delay effectively set global eradication efforts back at least a year, Aylward said...