Radical Islam blocks efforts to stamp out polio
SAN ANGELO, Texas —
At the start of the new millennium, the United Nations' health
organizations, WHO and UNICEF, were reasonably confident that polio
could be eradicated by the end of 2004.
Then came radical Islam, with its suspicions about — if not downright
hatred of — the United States. Muslim leaders in northern Nigeria
announced that they were blocking U.N. immunizations of children
because, they believed, the vaccines were laced with HIV and
sterilization chemicals: It was all part of a sinister U.S. plot to
reduce the Muslim population.
Whether the villagers believed this nonsense or not was immaterial
because the Islamic radicals were prepared to stop the immunizations by
force.
The disease spread to southern Nigeria and seven neighboring West
African nations, and it has been a slow process to recoup the lost
ground.
Now a Pakistani Taliban commander in North Waziristan has banned a
polio-inoculation program just days before 161,000 children under age 5
were to be vaccinated. If this ban stands, it is a heartbreaking setback
in the drive to eliminate the disease.
The commander, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, said he would allow the program to
go forward if the U.S. stops all drone strikes. In a way, holding the
children hostage to this crippling disease is a backhanded compliment:
It suggests that the U.S. is too humane to allow this to happen and that
we care more about Pakistan's children than Taliban leaders do.
According to The New York Times, Pakistan accounted for 198 new cases
of polio last year, the highest rate in the world. The disease is now
endemic in just three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.
The sad thing about this mujahedeen meddling is that health workers
were beginning to make real progress, 22 new cases reported in Pakistan
so far this year compared with 52 this time last year.
It would speak very poorly of Pakistan if its government stood by
while this crippling but easily preventable disease spread through the
children of its northern tribes.
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