Polio vaccination

After 1990

Polio vaccination programs have been resisted by some people in Pakistan and Afghanistan – the two countries with remaining wild polio cases as of 2020. Almost all Muslim religious and political leaders have endorsed the vaccine, but a fringe minority believes that the vaccines are secretly being used for the sterilisation of Muslims. The fact that the CIA organized a fake vaccination program in 2011 to help find Osama bin Laden is an additional cause of distrust. In 2015, the WHO announced a deal with the Taliban to encourage them to distribute the vaccine in areas they control. However, the Pakistani Taliban was not supportive. On 11 September 2016, two unidentified gunmen associated with the Pakistani Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, shot Zakaullah Khan, a doctor who was administering polio vaccines in Pakistan. The leader of the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the shooting and stated that the group would continue this type of attack. Such resistance to and skepticism of vaccinations has consequently slowed down the polio eradication process within the two remaining endemic countries.