A polio epidemic spreading from Nigeria throughout West and Central Africa has begun to come under control, but more funds are needed to wipe out the disease in 2005, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

Unless it received some $35 million soon, the WHO will be forced to postpone or cut back immunization campaigns planned in both Asia and Africa in 2005, Bruce Aylward, WHO’s polio coordinator, told a news briefing.

The United Nations agency said fresh immunization campaigns would be launched this week in 24 countries in the region. This time it would include Democratic Republic of Congo, although delays were expected in Ivory Coast due to fighting.

Its largest-ever polio campaign so far, in 23 countries of West and Central Africa in October, was “very successful,” including vaccination of between 75 and 85 percent of children in Nigeria, Aylward said. “The coverage is looking quite positive. More importantly, the number of cases we are seeing is starting to drop in West Africa, suggesting that the massive epidemic that was emerging out of Nigeria is starting to come under control,” Aylward said.

“At this point Ivory Coast is still planning to participate in (immunization) activities, albeit late,” he added.

Some 918 cases have been confirmed worldwide so far in 2004, including 678 in Nigeria. This compared with 784 total in 2003.

Campaigners had hoped to wipe out polio this year, but the virus has spread in the past 18 months from Nigeria to 12 African countries where it had been wiped out.

This as mainly due to the northern Nigerian state of Kano banning vaccines a year ago out of misplaced fear that it caused infertility and spread HIV, according to WHO officials.

Polio, a highly infectious disease, mainly affects children under age five. At the start of the campaign in 1988, there were more than 350,000 estimated cases a year.