Secular Café: Polio vaccination and politics

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Polio vaccination and politics Sep 3rd 2012, 12:59 This isn't new, but I wanted to discuss some of the issues. I hope that everyone is aware of the success of the smallpox vaccination campaign. The smallpox virus was eliminated some years ago, apart from stocks known to be held in laboratories. WHO has for a long time spearheaded a campaign to eradicate the polio virus by mass vaccination. Polio is a really horrible disease that attacks mostly the young, killing them or leaving them badly crippled. I remember the fear every summer as the season for polio (then known as infantile paralysis) came round and I saw many of the "lucky" survivors with their permanently stunted and twisted limbs. Some survived without working muscles to breathe with, living out their days in a structure called an iron lung. See story here about one such survivor: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3182096.stm When polio vaccination was introduced it made for a vast improvement. I volunteered for a rather experimental injection as a teenager. As vaccines were improved, infant oral vaccination by means of a sugar lump was introduced. For many decades it has been routine for children in the west. But polio has continued to ravage lives in some tropical countries, particularly ones under Islamic control. Some years ago it looked as though WHO was on the brink of worldwide success, but an ignorant imam in Nogeria decided it was a western plot to sterilise Muslim Nigerians. Vaccination was excluded and polio rates soared, with the epidemic being spread to other countries. Eventually, the situation in Nigeria calmed down, but now we have problem in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan were the Taleban are active. So health workers have been shot. http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencein...-pakistan.html Quote: A man working for the World Health Organization (WHO) on the polio eradication campaign was shot and killed in Karachi, Pakistan, on the evening of 20 July. Muhammad Ishaq was shot outside his clinic in a rough slum area of Karachi known as Gadap. Ishaq, who was from the local community, died en route to the hospital. Just 3 days earlier, two gunmen shot a Ghanaian doctor working for WHO and his Pakistani driver, who were participating in a national polio vaccination campaign, in their car. The doctor was wounded in the stomach; the driver suffered a grazing wound on his shoulder. Both men are recovering. After the first shooting, WHO cancelled the remainder of the vaccination campaign in Gadap and put in place stepped-up security measures. This may look like religious nuttery, but it may rather be political nuttery. Apparently a Talaban leader has said that it is in retaliation for American actions in sending drones into Pakistan. In addition, the doctor who got a 33-year sentence for tipping off the American's about Bin Laden's whereabouts was working on the polio programme. See this http://www.longwarjournal.org/archiv...od_taliban.php Quote: Mullah Nazir, the leader of the Taliban in the Wazir tribal areas who is known to shelter top al Qaeda leaders and who has called himself a member of al Qaeda, said the polio vaccination program is being used by the US to spy against terrorist groups and conduct drone strikes in the tribal areas. "Polio and other foreign-funded vaccination drives in Wana sub division would not be allowed until US drone operations in the agency are stopped," a pamphlet issued by Nazir stated, according to Dawn. "In the garb of these vaccination campaigns, the US and its allies are running their spying networks in FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Agencies] which has brought death and destruction on them in the form of drone strikes," the pamphlet continued. Nazir referenced Dr. Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who aided the US in finding and killing Osama bin Laden. Afridi is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence for charges of supporting the Laskar-e-Islam, an Islamist terror group based in Khyber. The pamphlet called Afridi a "traitor" and said his use of the vaccination program to find bin Laden was evidence that "infidel forces are using media, education, and development as a tool to gag Muslims." Nazir's edict banning polio vaccinations is very similar to a decree issued by Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the leader of the Taliban in North Waziristan, who also shut down the anti-polio program in his tribal agency. In mid-June, Bahadar issued a statement that linked the polio vaccination program to drone strikes and Dr. Afridi, and said the program would not resume until the US air campaign ceased. [See LWJ report, 'Good' Taliban commander halts polio vaccinations over drone strikes.] Both Nazir and Bahadar now follow in the footsteps of Mullah Fazlullah, the erratic commander of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan's faction in Swat, who has also ordered a ban on polio vaccinations. Fazlullah claimed that the anti-polio campaign was a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. Would you say that the USA bears any responsibility for all this?

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