Shooting of UN doctor imperils Pakistan's campaign against polio

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

Pakistan's drive against polio has been thrown into chaos after a foreign doctor was shot in the southern port city of Karachi, a day after the Taliban reiterated a ban on immunisation in the country's tribal areas.

A three-day nationwide immunisation campaign was launched on Monday but the Pakistan Taliban prohibited its administration in parts of the tribal area that borders Afghanistan, putting around 300,000 children at risk. Last year Pakistan was the country with the highest number of cases of polio.

There has been a severe backlash against immunisation for polio and other diseases since the CIA used a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, to set up a fake vaccination programme as a cover for the hunt for Osama bin Laden in the northern town of Abbottabad, in the north western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Pashtuns, a conservative ethnic group, are the majority in that province and the tribal area.

"The Shakil Afridi factor has had an impact. Not all over Pakistan, but in certain parts, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in the Pashtun community. Also in certain Pashtun communities in Karachi," said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, a senior adviser to the prime minister, who is overseeing the polio eradication campaign.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/17/shooting-un-doctor-pakistan-polio

[insomniazhou]

1. Spam deleted by Warren DeMontague (MIR Team)

[Odin2005]

2. Religion makes you stupid.

"the Taliban reiterated a ban on immunisation"

[awoke_in_2003]

3. Unfortunately we help feed it...

by allowing the CIA to pull the shit it does.

[Odin2005]

4. Yes, because getting Bin Ladin was a bad thing.

[xocet]

5. It IS a bad thing to use doctors and health care workers as intelligence assets.... n/t

[awoke_in_2003]

6. Well, maybe we should start...

putting Red Croses on military convoys. That is illegal in international law. Fake immunization programs should be, too.

[Igel]

9. And yet not all politics is local to the United States.

However much we may like to think that our concerns are those of everybody, and all politics in the world are, really, domestic US politics.

"The revelation regarding Afridi aggravated prejudice against polio drops, with many believing that they are a western conspiracy to sterilise Muslims."

The Afridi business is receding. It just aggravated prejudice against polio vaccination. The Taliban ban preceded Afridi by years, and doctors immunizing against polio have been subjected to death threats, beating, and being forced out of areas for years. Because the tale is that the polio vaccinations are actually there to destroy Islam--by depriving the women of male children, their families will be wiped out and the Muslim nation will be bereft of the young men who so need to protect Allah from being violated by the unbelievers (who often don't wear protection and might thereby sire an illegitimate son).

[4th law of robotics]

7. We still have polio in this day and age

we have a vaccine that works great and is cheap.

But we still have polio.

Thanks religious nutjobs. Glad that's something you helped preserve from the good old days.

[Posteritatis]

8. It's frustrating. We're *so close* to wiping it out and have been for years. (nt)

[Igel]

10. It's actually pretty bad.

Not only are there cases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but the occasional case pops up in places like Kashmir and Nigeria and Somalia and Yemen. In the latter countries the cases are quickly treated, and then a year or two later, another pops up.

Pakistan is the source. Jihadis and those seeking spiritual enlightenment of the most extreme kind and traveling to the Pak hinterland for it are the messengers and couriers.

[riderinthestorm]

11. Taliban resistance to vaccinations pre-dates Afridi

There are many ignorant tribal areas that believe getting a jab, this is nothing new.

They may have latched onto Afridi's case as another reason to keep the locals from getting the polio vaccine but its disingenuous to paint the historic resistance as solely related to the CIA use of Afridi.