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Subscribe to RSSSo far nine health workers have been murdered while walking door to door to deliver polio vaccines to children in need because some believe the immunizations are part of a U.S. plot. NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports.
Updated 8:00 p.m. ET: PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan may be one of the world's three remaining polio-stricken countries but Sartaj Khan has decided that the government-sponsored vaccination campaign is much more sinister than it appears.
"These vaccines are meant to destroy our nation," said Khan, a 42-year-old lawyer in the city of Peshawar. "The [polio] drops make men less manly, and make women more excited and less bashful. Our enemies want to wipe us out."
Khan is not alone in the belief, propagated by extremist groups, that is gaining currency in the Pashtun belt of northwestern Pakistan: The government’s anti-polio campaign is a ruse by the Americans to sterilize or spy on Muslims.
Many also believe that much like the Pakistani physician, Dr. Shakeel Afridi, who helped the CIA run a fake vaccination program to establish the presence of Osama bin Laden, the army of health workers employed to vaccinate the country’s children are also on the United States’ payroll.
The belief has turned deadly: Nine anti-polio workers have been killed by gunmen on motorcycles this week. Some of those killed were teenage girls. Following the violence, the United Nations pulled back all staff involved in the vaccination campaign and officials suspended it in some parts of the country.
Muhammed Muheisen / AP
Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.
There are ranks of parents whose awareness is low and suspicions high when it comes to the deadly virus: A November World Health Organization study found that 41 percent of those polled had never heard of polio — and 11 percent refused to vaccinate their children.
The reality is that polio can paralyze or kill within hours of infection. It is transmitted person-to-person, meaning that as long as one child is infected, the disease can be passed to others.
Photos: Vaccination workers gunned down in Pakistan
Nuclear-armed and militancy-struck Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the only countries still struggling with polio. Extremists have opposed vaccination programs in Afghanistan and Nigeria, although they haven’t resorted to the sort of violence seen in Pakistan. According to the World Health Organization, there were 213 new cases of polio worldwide in 2012, including 56 in Pakistan.
Mohsin Raza / Reuters
A female polio worker gives polio vaccine drops to a child in Lahore, Pakistan, on Thursday.
Polio also disproportionately affects members of the Pashtun population in Pakistan, who largely live in the country's northwest and border region. They account for roughly 15 percent of the population, but 75 percent of all polio cases.
Shamim Bibi, a 25-year-old mother of two who has been working in Peshawar’s suburbs as an anti-polio campaign worker for the last nine years, said she had never before faced hostility in her line of work.
"For years, we were welcomed into homes by families," she said. "In 2012, attitudes changed. Now, they look at us with a sort of suspicion. Some people have even said it to my face: that I’m an American spy."
More Pakistan coverage from NBC News
Suspicion of the United States does indeed run deep. Unknown gunmen may have assassinated 14-year-old anti-polio worker Farzana Rehman in her hometown of Peshawar but her grieving father is placing the blame for her death further afield.
"My daughter was too young to leave this world," an obviously distraught Said Rehman told NBC News. "Polio didn’t take her. This American war did. So what’s the bigger danger, huh?"
The American war refers to the post-Sept. 11, 2001, violence that has swept Pakistan and Afghanistan, in particular U.S. drone strikes that enrage many. In parts of Pakistan, the war is also called the Kharji, or "white person's" war.
In Pakistan's largest city, 'Old Glory' is flammable and profitable
As experts cite the latest violence as a new form of "low tech, high concept" attacks by Pakistan’s militants, Rehman can only wonder if those trying to stop the disease are missing the point.
"Disease didn’t take my child. A bullet did," he said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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See what you've done to our thinking, you crazy radical religious Muslim freaks!
These people are stuck in the Dark Ages.
These vaccines are meant to destroy our nation,” said Khan, a 42-year-old lawyer in the city of Peshawar. “The [polio] drops make men less manly, and make women more excited and less bashful. Our enemies want to wipe us out.”
In most countries you need to be educated to be a lawyer.
sad that even people in this country believe such nonsense- "The HPV vaccine causes mental retardation" you saw people like michelle bachmanna and others saying this ignorant lie. hope, like the people here that those in pakistan get polio, snuff it and remove themselves from our gene pool
What a shame....why are we there?
Come get yer tinfoil hats! Tinfoil hats fer sale! As another poster said..."You can't cure stupid."
Well, in all honesty I wouldn't put it past our government to do something like that - look what they've done to it's own citizens over the decades. Anyway, I say STOP the polio vaccine and when the Pakistani children start developing polio, then those parents will realize they were wrong and their children will have to pay for the parents mistake. Terrible, but what else can one do?!
Just let them all die from curable diseases, the less Muslims we have to deal with the less hate & violence Americans have to deal with! Why vaccinate them for ANYTHING??? As much as they hate Americans & LOVE to kill us, we shouldn't be doing ANYTHING for them and STOP giving them any money. Especially as bad off financially as we are. And I know some politically correct person will colapse this, idiot.
i wouldnt say get rid of the muslims as a whole...just get rid of these crazy effers doing these kind of things. stop giving these vaccines to them directly. if pakistan wants to save its people let them do it themselves. they wont so we get rid of them by default
While the general US population has naively accepted the proliferation of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines as "necessary" and a "regular part" of life as well as the proliferation of disinformation by pharmaceutical companies and the government to make people appear crazy and irrational who choose not to take vaccinations, not to allow fluoridation in their drinking water, etc., the population is not asking simple and obvious questions. If these drugs really do what we are told then why are more people sick and gravely ill? There is evidence that cancers and other illness can be traced back to specific vaccinations. Fluoridation of water was used in concentration camps in order to subdue the prisoners and keep them submissive.
So it is reasonable for Pakistan to consider the vaccination as a possible time bomb. Though it may not produce sterilization, I would be concerned that it could create the same illnesses common in the US. There could also be something in all vaccinations today that will gravely affect all of us in the future. The reliance on pharmaceuticals is insane. There are no substitutes for being healthy and having a strong immune system.
The time has come for all of us to wake up and start questioning what is going on in our world. Common sense and simple thinking will allow one to understand that there are controls beyond our immediate comprehension. And the more we can live independent of drugs and commercially produced foods, the better off we will become. While I may not have the answers, I understand that there are forces within our government and multinational corporations that have conspired against the people in our country and world for their own personal gain. Wake-up! Wake-up! Wake-up!
way to have a healthy immune system? how about people in this country start excersising, get out from behind your damn Ipads and go intereact with people. dont eat massive portions at mcdonalds, stop giving kids soda and candy all the time....i quit, the stupidity is gonna choke me
While the general US population has naively accepted the proliferation of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines as "necessary" and a "regular part" of life as well as the proliferation of disinformation by pharmaceutical companies and the government to make people appear crazy and irrational who choose not to take vaccinations, not to allow fluoridation in their drinking water, etc., the population is not asking simple and obvious questions. If these drugs really do what we are told then why are more people sick and gravely ill? There is evidence that cancers and other illness can be traced back to specific vaccinations. Fluoridation of water was used in concentration camps in order to subdue the prisoners and keep them submissive.
So it is reasonable for Pakistan to consider the vaccination as a possible time bomb. Though it may not produce sterilization, I would be concerned that it could create the same illnesses common in the US. There could also be something in all vaccinations today that will gravely affect all of us in the future. The reliance on pharmaceuticals is insane. There are no substitutes for being healthy and having a strong immune system.
The time has come for all of us to wake up and start questioning what is going on in our world. Common sense and simple thinking will allow one to understand that there are controls beyond our immediate comprehension. And the more we can live independent of drugs and commercially produced foods, the better off we will become. While I may not have the answers, I understand that there are forces within our government and multinational corporations that have conspired against the people in our country and world for their own personal gain. Wake-up! Wake-up! Wake-up!
''These vaccines are meant to destroy our nation''
Now there's an idea, little American flags on every cure down to the common cold and the ignorant would run from the hospitals.
I would also have to ask isn't their ignorance to pandemic disease a good enough health risk to America to ban all travel to and from these countries?
It's great to see Pakistan has its own version of FOX! SPREAD that paranoia!
LOL! That's a good one! ;)
The uneducated and the misinformed are easily led astray. -- John Mellencamp
The scenarios the Taliban -- and many other Muslim factions -- come up with only perpetuate the thought that they are the ones who hate everyone else. They are obviously in the business of creating doubt, fear and hate in their ongoing effort to make all Muslims everywhere hate Americans.
Yes you stupid Muslims, keep refusing the vaccination. We'll all be better off with less of you.
What hatred most of you posters spew! You should be ashamed of yourselves and pray to your god -- whose representative on Earth abhorred such evil -- for forgiveness.
Can you say, "nuts!"?
This is no more ridiculous than the NRA foaming at the mouth with their "the government wants to kill us all" mantra to support their whack-job position that automatic weapons should be in the hands of civilians.
Before we start pointing the finger at them for being stupid, we've got some damage control of our own to do first.
To all the muslims out there thinking this is a ploy to sterilize you, the US could put that stuff in your drinking water. Nothing to cover up there!
Bring our troops home!!!
Maybe we should give them fast food instead. Oh wait...then they'd say we are trying to kill them with diabetes
Ignorance is to blame for the young girls death and so it the person who shot her, which I am about 99.99% sure is not an American. It is sad, but ignorance is everywhere. There are people in the US who protest against vaccination. They do not kill people, but believe it could cause autism. There are still people who do not believe in killing/murder, but will still murder a doctor who performs abortions. There are a lot of people here who believe the same lies the taliban use to get people to kill themselves in the name of God, but noone ever checks for themselves to see that suicide is a sin and so it attacking women, children and unarmed men.
ladies and gentlemen we can foster a healthy conversation without demeaning the pakistani people, is malala yousefsaih a paki or a pakistani in every country this one included ,there are people there who are very progressive thinking and forward looking lets figure out a way to help those thinkers like Mala and others,the various post on here calling the pakistanis savages does little to further our connection to them it only serves to rile their religoius sensibilities as backward as you may see them,remember white supremacy was linked to christianity as wholesome and good and we managed to cut that out mostly.they need the same epiphany as american whites needed to stop the massacre of non whites in this country.
Just another example why we need to put a barrier around these moslem countries, nobody goes in, nobody comes out. They do not want to be part of the modern world, they fight against anything like intelligence and education - what does civilization need this for? And as for giving them democracy, how is that working in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan - get the drift?
So, let them go back to the dark ages, where they can all bow and worship the high muck-a-muck, offer human (female) sacrifices, all them fun things. Just cut off the supply of modern technology, nothing past the eithteenth century gets to them. Then they can develop their own or do without.
I love how psychotic these people. Pull back all support money and aid. Let them all die from their stupidity. When the parents of the dead children are crying for help in the street then they might think twice. Oh no Alah will save them, BS.
It appears that every country has their ignorant teabaggers.
maybe put some valium in the drinking water......that should stop some killings over there.....
Go ahead you mindless ignorant Pakastani people kick all of us out of your country who are trying to stop the spread of polio in your country. Then when polio ravages your people and decimates your population you will be begging us to come back into your country asking us to stop this horrible disease. And you know what we wont be coming back you can try solving the problem yourself!!!