By Helen Epstein | The New York Review of Books
This week, nine members of a polio vaccination team in Pakistan were murdered by gunmen thought to be linked to the Taliban, which has long regarded vaccinators as potential spies or part of a secret plot to sterilize Muslims. The team was working for a global UN-led campaign supported by billions of dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rotary Club to wipe out polio from the face of earth. This might seem like a good idea. Polio is horrible, and cases of death and paralysis from the disease have fallen from hundreds of thousands a year to a few hundred since 1988, when the campaign started.
But the polio eradication campaign is ill-conceived. It’s a holdover from a heroic Cold War age when the UN was viewed as a neutral player uniquely positioned to advance public health anywhere in the world. During the 1970s and 80s, UNICEF and the World Health Organization carried out highly effective vaccination campaigns in countries allied to both the Soviet Union and the United States. In Sudan, El Salvador, Lebanon, and elsewhere they even persuaded warring parties to suspend hostilities long enough for health teams to administer the vaccines and then get out. The agencies rightly received Nobel Prizes for this work, and their vaccination campaigns became the model for today’s polio crusade. Read More...