Polio in Syria

From strategyPage:

apparently the anti Polio campaign by the Taliban, which has killed half a dozen docs and health care workers in Pakistan/Afghanistan, is now spreading the disease with their jihadis

Syria is going to attempt a widespread polio vaccination campaign because Pakistani Islamic terrorist rebels have apparently introduced polio into Syria. So far this year there have been 13 cases of polio in Syria, after having been absent since the late 1990s. In Pakistan there have been 62 cases of polio so far this year, which was more than all of 2012 (58). In Pakistan polio cases reached a low of 28 in 2005 but then Islamic terrorist opposition to vaccination led to a sharp increase that hit 198 cases in 2011. Since then, Pakistani government and religious leaders have sought to deal with resistance to the vaccination campaign. In Pakistan a third of the polio cases have shown up outside the territories. A Taliban ban on polio vaccinations has left over 250,000 young children vulnerable to the disease and these are most of the ones getting infected. Years of Islamic radical clerics preaching that polio is un-Islamic has caused a growing number of parents (from throughout the country) to refuse the vaccinations, even when there is no Islamic terrorist threat of retaliation. This year about three percent of Pakistani children failed to get the vaccination, either because of Islamic terrorists or parents believing the anti-vaccination propaganda. Polio should have been eliminated entirely by now, as it can only survive in a human host. But there has been resistance from Islamic clergy in some countries, who insist the vaccinations are a Western plot to harm Moslem children. This has enabled polio to survive in some Moslem countries (especially Nigeria, Somalia, and Pakistan). The disease also survives in some very corrupt nations, like Kenya and India, because of the difficulty in getting vaccines to remote areas, tracking down nomad groups, and stopping corrupt officials from plundering the vaccination program (and causing many vaccinations to not happen). Islamic terrorists from Pakistan are believed responsible for a recent outbreak of polio in Syria because an analysis of the DNA of the polio in Syria was similar to polio DNA found in Pakistan.

other news stories add it is spreading to Egypt and polio.

And although some of the lamestream media blame the US for this (because someone revealed a Pakistani doc working for the polio campaign helped to ID Osama ben laden) that is a lie: They were killing polio workers, including the Pakistani doctor who was directing the program, long before Osama was found.