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Polio cases up as clerics malign vaccination

* Rumours leave children unprotected
* Aid workers increasingly targeted by militants

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: The parents of 24,000 children in northern Pakistan refused to allow health workers to administer polio vaccinations last month, mostly due to rumours that the harmless vaccine was an American plot to sterilise innocent Muslim children, The Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.

The disinformation - spread by extremist clerics using mosque loudspeakers and illegal radio stations, and by word of mouth - has caused a sharp jump in polio cases in Pakistan and hit global efforts to eradicate the debilitating disease, the newspaper said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded 39 cases of polio in Pakistan in 2006, up from 28 in 2005. The disease is concentrated in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), where 60 percent of the refusals were attributed to “religious reasons”.

“It was very striking. There was a lot of anti-American propaganda as well as some misconceptions about sterilisation,” said Dr Sarfaraz Afridi, a campaign manager with the WHO in Peshawar.

The NWFP government made strenuous efforts to counter talk of an “infidel vaccine”. Health workers fanning across the province last month were equipped with copies of a fatwa (religious order), endorsing the vaccinations and signed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leaders of Pakistan’s most powerful religious parties. The move reassured many doubters.

Although only 24,000 children missed the vaccine, the WHO officials said failure to vaccinate in small pockets of the country gave the virus a fresh toehold to spread.

The vaccination struggle is entangled with the confrontation between the government and powerful militants in the tribal areas. Refusals were highest in areas where conservative clerics and self-styled “Pakistani Taliban” fighters hold sway, flouting government authority and making their own strict laws.

Almost 2,000 children were not vaccinated in Bajaur, a tribal agency on the Afghan border. In nearby Swat Valley, a young firebrand cleric, Maulana Fazlullah, denounced the polio campaign through a local FM radio station. Almost 4,000 children were not vaccinated in Swat.

Imran Khan, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said: “Some people feel they are under attack here ... That is clouding their attitudes.”

Aid workers fear they are being pushed into the frontline of the struggle between the government and tribal militants. Last weekend a grenade was lobbed into a Red Crescent compound in Peshawar, damaging vehicles but killing nobody. Cleric Mufti Khalid Shah declared a fatwa on employees of the UN, WHO and all other foreign organisations. “Killing their employees is in line with the teachings of jihad in Islam,” said a notice. Recently aid workers in Bannu were threatened with death.

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