https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-polio-vaccination-campaig...
'The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the U.N. said Monday. It’s a devastating setback for polio eradication, since the virus is one of the world’s most infectious and any unvaccinated groups of children where the virus is spreading could undo years of progress.
'Afghanistan is one of two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. The other is Pakistan. It’s likely that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions for other countries in the region and beyond.
'News of the suspension was relayed to U.N. agencies right before the September immunization campaign was due to start. No reason was given for the suspension, and no one from the Taliban-controlled government was immediately available for comment...'
COMMENT (NPW): This is clearly due to a failure of the global evidence ecosystem. By definition, the global evidence ecosystem is failing if it does not provide the basic reliable healthcare information that parents and children need to protect their health. The Taliban has not yet commented, but we know that large numbers of polio health workers have been murdered over the past 10+ years in Afghanistan, due to false beliefs about polio vaccine. This paper https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10185917/ shows more than 200 polio health workers have been killed.
Two more polio health workers were killed last Wednesday:
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/two-killed-attack-pakistani-p...
It is perverse and tragic that health workers are losing their lives because of a failure to communicate reliable healthcare information.
HIFA stands ready to explore ways to better meet the healthcare information needs of faith leaders, families and children. We have has a successful track record of facilitating deep-dive, multistakeholder discussions on the HIFA forums, resulting in published papers, presentations and more (for a description of how these work, see HIFA Projects: www.hifa.org/projects ).
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
