Pakistan's polio outbreak and the hunt for Osama Bin Laden
There are some in international health and security circles who say that a CIA-run scheme led to mistrust of well-meaning vaccination programs in Pakistan... and even to the murder of health care workers.
Just four years ago, the World Health Organization believed it was on the verge of driving polio away forever. But a few weeks ago, they had a very different message ...
The Director General has declared the international spread of wild polio virus today, in 2014, a public health emergency of international concern. There's been 74 cases of polio due to wild polio virus so far this year, 59 of those cases have been reported from Pakistan.the World Health Organization
Bruce Aylward, the WHO's Assistant Director General had to sound the alarm again, declaring polio an international public health emergency. The organization has only done that once before, with the flu pandemic of 2009. As Dr. Aylward notes, the country leading the current polio outbreak is Pakistan.
There are many reasons why Pakistan is home to the most significant outbreak of polio in the 21st century. Some observers trace the current outbreak, at least in part, to the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, and a secret CIA programme -- a programme that just this week the White House promised never to repeat.
You don't pretend to be an aid worker to advance a security objective. We were appalled.Joel Charny, Vice President for Humanitarian Policy and Practice at InterAction
It's a story that Pakistan-based journalist Saeed Shah first reported in 2011, for the Guardian newspaper.
For a disease that has had a vaccine since the 1950s, and which has been on the verge of global eradication for so long, news of new outbreaks in Pakistan is tragic -- but tragically, not unique. We take a look at the "Afridi Affair" and how the fake vaccination ruse affects the work of aid workers, not only in Pakistan, but around the world.
- Saeed Shah covers Pakistan for the Wall Street Journal. He first reported on the Afridi Affair for the Guardian, back in 2011.
- Joel Charny is Vice President for Humanitarian Policy and Practice at InterAction, a Washington DC alliance of relief and development organizations.
- Annie Sparrow is a pediatrician and public health expert, and Deputy Director of the Human Rights Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
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This segment was produced by The Current's Peter Mitton.