ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Thursday said the fake vaccination campaign conducted by United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ahead of the secret raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in 2011 was one of the major reasons behind the rising number of polio cases in the country.
“Dr Shakil Afridi’s fake campaign has created doubts about vaccination drives among people,” Foreign Office Spokesperson Tasnim Aslam told reporters at her weekly news briefing on Thursday. “A fake campaign of vaccination was conducted in Pakistan in which the UN agencies were also used.”
Her remarks came in response to the recent international travel restrictions imposed on Pakistan by the World Health Organization (WHO) for the country’s failure to completely eradicate the polio virus.
“These are not restrictions. These are recommendations. They are called IHR regulations. This issue has been under discussion between Pakistan and WHO since 2012,” Tasnim insisted responding to the measure announced by the public health arm of the United Nations.
Pakistan is only one of three countries where the polio virus remains endemic. According to the WHO, 59 cases of polio have been reported so far in the country this year alone.
Majority of these cases have been found in the tribal areas, where the military is fighting militancy.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 9th, 2014.
Sure, it must be the fake vaccine campaign…it couldn’t possibly be the religious leaders who have spoken against inoculation?…just as it couldn’t possibly be the TTP murderers who have killed health workers, police and military guards trying to protect health workers?…nor is it the media who have repeated the lies about vaccine causing sterilization…or the conspiracy theorists who have told the people that the vaccine is part of a plot against Islam by the west…it couldn’t possibly be any of those things..it has to be work of dr. Afridi to use immunization campaign to find the worlds biggest terrorist living in Pakistan…sure that is what is the problem…