#UNREPORTEDNEWS
So anyone who knows me will be aware I am most definitely I.T. challenged. I will admit my short coming is a lack of patience with the bloody thing. On more than one occasion I could quite happily have thrown my laptop etc, out of the bloody window.
However, sanity always returns and I somehow muddle on, hence my elation at finally figuring out how to get bloody Netflix and Amazon Prime on my Xbox. The world is now my oyster hahahahaha.
So what have I been watching? One of the most fascinating and heart wrenching documentaries I have seen in many a month. A documentary on the Taliban and its aversion to modern medicine in Pakistan. Truly shocking!
POLIO
At its peak in the 1950’s, polio paralysed 350,000 people per year worldwide. In 2014, the cases were 128 of which 99% were in Pakistan. Polio has been eradicated in all but three countries, namely Afghanistan,Nigeria and Pakistan. The South Asian nation is the only one where the number of cases are rising significantly. We wonder why right? Well, read on and I will tell you.
THE TALIBAN
The Taliban has prohibited polio vaccines just when the country was on the verge of eliminating the disease. The Pakistani government is doing what it can to keep the outbreak from spilling out of the Taliban controlled area but it is a tough ask. The immunisation ban is in the North and South of the Waziristan district, along the Afghan border. Roughly, 250,000 children have not been immunised against the preventable but incurable disease. Remember this is a culture that looks down on disability.
In the documentary a couple had two children under five, both with polio and who in all probability would never be able to walk simply from the lack of being immunised. A two second job of drops into the mouth and none of their pain would have happened. Heart breaking.
The Muslim clerics are preaching that the vaccine drops are a plot to sterilise muslims, or that the vaccine contains ingredients derived from pigs. Another bizarre claim widely circulated after the US invasion of Afghanistan was that the polio vaccine contained the urine of the President of the United States! I kid you not.
Islamic clerics were echoing the Taliban’s dictates. In rural area where it was widely believed the best form of medicine is an amulet against evil pushed by local imam’s (remember Fakhunda) where science holds no sway. The crippling effects of polio are seen as a curse from god, a punishment, are they forgetting these are innocent young children?
After the CIA’s decision to set up fake “Hepatitis B” vaccination programmes as part of its hunt for Osama bin Laden. They managed to fuel militant suspicion of the global project to eradicate polio. The White House has since promised it will never again use vaccination programmes as a cover for spying.
The Taliban issued a fatwa on polio vaccinations.
HEALTH WORKERS
The health workers mostly women as this it is not acceptable for men to enter a woman’s home, are threatened and attacked with every visit to a village or farm. They have armed guards and drivers with them at all times, as the villagers are averse to their children receiving the vaccine.
The villagers are obviously terrified of the Taliban and what would happen to them if they accept the vaccine, and also a few of them mentioned, as the polio vaccine is not mentioned in the Qu’ran it is not accepted medicine. Leaves you speechless doesn’t it? However, the stupidity is no laughing matter.
The documentary showed a clinic in Islamabad where dozens of mothers with sick children waited patiently in the monsoon heat for medical attention whilst the female doctor on duty sat in her air conditioned office reading the Qu’ran.
ASSASSINATIONS BEGIN
The Taliban began targeting polio workers in June 2012 when they issued a fatwa declaring polio vaccine “poison”.
Eighty vaccine workers have been murdered since the programme was started in 2012. This is what happened to Naseer and his wife :-
Naseer and his wife Bibi, had gone to bed before midnight exhausted after three days of hauling a cooler full of vaccines from village to village along country roads, going from farm to farm, giving vaccine drops to children. they were jolted awake by two deafening blasts. Grenades.
Seven masked men burst into their home firing wildly into the darkness. Nasser spent he rest of the night in the hospital waiting as surgeons removed a bullet from his wives leg and grenade shrapnel was removed from his son’s back.
They had been attacked for being polio vaccinators, for which they earned $15 a day for their troubles, and notoriously never paid on time by the Pakistani government.
Many more attacks on health workers have been rife across the region and some have paid the ultimate price for helping innocent children.
- One woman had dogs set on her in Dera
- Another was tortured before she was killed and her body dumped in a field in Peshawar
- In Karachi, a woman was doused with petrol and set aflame.
- Two were killed when a Taliban militant tossed a hand grenade into a van filled with polio workers
- Most attacks are made by a passing motorbike rider with a gun
- Four workers and their driver were kidnapped and their bodies found the next day.
- The list goes on
TALIBAN U-TURN
In 2014, the Taliban suddenly made a U-turn issuing a statement offering its support of the vaccine as long as foreigners were not involved and local customs were respected.
It also ordered its fighters to give polio workers “all necessary support”
All of the murder’s I have described here were after the u-turn by the Taliban
Right now there is no indication when the armed conflict between the Taliban and the government will end – or when the Taliban will actually allow vaccinations to help their children in no go areas.
Meanwhile, innocent children suffer form a disease that is preventable. Religion v Science. Which helps the children more?
I rest my case…..
Find out more about SON and the shows that make up the network at Secular Outreach.com
It truly boggles my mind that such ridiculous superstitions exist and are believed in the 21st century.
Hopefully, this sort of thing will drive a wedge between the Taliban and their supporters, especially those with children. After all, several newspapers have reported that some people defied the Taliban and had their children immunised in secret.
Then again, the Taliban appear to have realised that this may have shot them in the foot. After all, when you despise the crippled and malformed and you are responsible for their suffering in the first place, then you are clearly winnowing through your own volunteer pool.
Sadly, it is a terrible price to pay for such an possible eventuality. And as always with these scum, it is the innocent children who are forced to suffer the most. Especially when you have doctors who seem to put their comfort and spiritual ideals ahead of the health and well-being of their patients.
As always, Deana, a fascinating and hard-hitting post.
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What does it say of the gullibility and the mindset of theism today …
The Taliban do not care about he individual only their collective ideology which is misleading them down a path to their own destruction.
many thanks for your comments as always much appreciated and boosts me to keep writing …..
D
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A truly shocking state of affairs. Sometimes I really do despair for humanity.
As always the answer is education, until this is sorted I’m afraid Pakistan and similar nations will remain in the dark ages and their peoples will continue to pay a terrible price for ignorance and superstition.
Great blog Deana, well done 💐💐
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I seem to write more and more on the situations caused by religion to the detriment of mankind. I really don’t pick the material it finds me.
I feel these issues and situations need to be voiced by the rest of the world. There are innocents in harms way because of political expediency and it makes me mad
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Where I grew up is just like the Taliban terrirory. The governor of my home state of Kano, where sharia held sway, vowed in 2003 that he’d rather lose his seat than allow any child get a doze of the polio vaccine. He saidresearch has shown that it was tainted to render muslims sterile. To date, many polio vaccine workers’ families that died on duty, as recent as 2013, were not compensated. The Taliban are everywhere, their new name, is Islamists, they wield not only the AK47, they wield a more effective way to keep helpless villagers in check, they wield the Quran…
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Hi M
On researching for this article, i did see the only two other countries in the world were Afghanistan and Nigeria. Happily the new cases of polio in both those countries is not on the increase. I hope for the eradication in your country soon.
Religion has a lot to answer for and anyone who believes in theism of any kind has a lot to answer for, they delude themselves see only the sugar coated mutterings for goat herders.
It breaks my heart to see the destruction by ISIS of such old wonders of historical significance and makes me doubly sad as without knowing they are actually destroying the historical basis of their own religion, its mythological roots. They are destroying their very ancestors…….
D
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Every one writes, but the difference i have observed what you write and the others is the knowledge and the pains you take in researching the facts and putting it aptly has an edge. Every word is well researched and your writing is like a happening right infront of our eyes.
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