After long banning polio campaigns, Taliban declares war on the disease
Published on December 11, 2023
After two decades of banning and undermining immunization campaigns, the Taliban has now endorsed polio vaccination—providing unexpected hope that the disease could finally be eliminated in Afghanistan. Poliovirus is still endemic in the country, but vaccinators have recently been able to get to previously unreachable virus hot spots.
- No attacks have been reported on public health workers this year.
- “We now have access all over the country,” said Hamid Jafari, director of the WHO’s regional polio eradication program.
The result: A “significant overall decline in vaccine holdouts” over the past two years: from ~230 cases per campaign to ~60. And the number of children reached by vaccinators here has more than doubled.
Longstanding claims that vaccines are Western conspiracies to cover spy operations have largely disappeared, vaccinators say.