...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
. It is estimated that over 250,000 children in tribal areas alone will not be vaccinated this year.
The Taliban are going all out to convince a large number of tribal Pashtuns that the polio vaccine is being administrated on behalf of the West with the objective of sterilizing their children.
To counter this false propaganda, the UN has nominated Shahid Afridi, himself a Pashtun from Khyber tribal
agency, as Polio Champion for this cricket-crazy nation. Whether Shahid will be able to convince his people, only time will tell.
However,
the hip bone's connected to the leg bone...
things appear to be more difficult this year as some of the tribal commanders who generally do not fight with the Pakistain Army, such as Mullah Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, have also banned vaccination in areas under their control.
They have made stopping the drone attacks a condition for permitting polio vaccination in their areas. I wish someone would tell these Taliban capos that they are intentionally risking the lives of thousands of their innocent children. Unfortunately, we are trapped in an anti-West fever, and no one should be surprised if there is a sharp increase in the number of polio cases in Pakistain. One fears that this virus, if not controlled at this stage, could spill over to other countries. Pakistain, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the three unfortunate countries where polio vaccination campaigns have been hampered by self-appointed religious reformers (in the case of Pakistain and Afghanistan, it's the Taliban and in Nigeria, it's the Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
who have stopped the vaccination program).
This is a failure on the part of government, civil society, religious scholars and the media who are lagging behind in this fight against ignorance and darkness.