Scientists, with the help of public-health workers, have managed to wipe just two diseases from the face of the earth: smallpox and rinderpest (otherwise known as cattle plague). This year, it had begun to look as if we would soon add another name to that list, a virus that has been a paralytic threat for millennia: polio.
The effort took a devastating step backward yesterday, with the news that six public-health workers were killed in Pakistan; all had been administering polio vaccines. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization declared the eradication of polio to be a world-wide health emergency (a designation which makes it easier to release funds). It did so primarily because the end seemed in sight. Just three countries continue to report infections: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. As soon as the news of the murders spread, however, the health minister for Pakistan’s southern Sindh Province put a halt to the vaccination program, which had employed more than twenty-four thousand aid workers. The risks of this detour, which will leave tens of thousands of people vulnerable to new infections, cannot be overstated.
Nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the coördinated attacks, but the Taliban has opposed polio vaccination vigorously. Taliban leaders have issued several religious edicts saying that the U.S. runs a spy network under the guise of a vaccine program. Now, there is no question that this is a depraved, heartless, and sickening act. But, as I wrote in a post here more than a year ago, the claim about the C.I.A. is not entirely untrue. In 2011, American intelligence, in a stunning display of arrogance, stupidity, or both, faked a vaccination drive as a cover for its attempt to pin down the location of Osama bin Laden. (The idea was to get DNA samples from the children in the Abbottabad compound while injecting them with a dummy vaccine, and then compare them to those of bin Laden’s relatives.) More here.