Violence and misinformation are threatening the World Health Organization’s efforts to eradicate polio. Last month Abdul Ghani Khan, a senior Pakistani doctor, was killed by a remote-controlled bomb shortly after urging villagers to vaccinate their children. In Pakistan, Afghanistan and among Muslim communities in India, some local clerics have denounced vaccination as a pro-western plot to sterilise Muslims. The same rumours stopped vaccination in northern Nigeria in 2003, causing an international surge in polio cases.
In Pakistan, some clerics who command a loyal local following have even declared that preventing epidemics is contrary to Islamic law, and have described people…
