Intenational Polio Vaccination Efforts.

Just as we have the naysayers on the use of immunizations for children in the U.S.A, the same problem occurs elsehwere as noted in the April issue of The Lancet-Infectious Diseases: V.7, Issue 4, April07, Page 235. Officials in northern Pakistan have admitted this month their failure to immunise more than 160 000 children against polio. Prominent Muslim clerics have condemned the ongoing vaccination programme as a conspiracy of the Christian west against Muslims, and say parents fear for the safety of their children amid rumours that the vaccine causes sexual impotence. In some areas vaccination teams have been attacked by locals. There is genuine concern that anti-vaccination propaganda, increasingly linked to anti-Americanism, will jeopardise targets to make the world polio-free.