When the time came to vaccinate my son against Polio, I had no hesitation about saying ‘yes’ to this procedure and I made this decision on good and sound evidential reasons but mostly because I have seen the ravages that Polio can bring to individuals their families and their communities. Being a ‘mid life parent’ I am old enough to recall seeing as a child, older teenagers with withered legs or arms or individuals who were only able to walk with the aid of ugly metal limb supports that were nicknamed ‘irons’. I can also recall adults speaking about how so and so caught Polio and ended up in an ‘iron lung’, an early form or artificial respirator, and seeing the fear on their faces when the word ‘Polio’ was mentioned.
Polio is a horrible and destructive disease and I took my son to the Doctors for his Polio vaccination thanking the Eternal One and Jonas Salk, the vaccine’s inventor, for that fact that this disease will not stalk my child’s life as it did the children of the generations that preceded me. Polio is something I would not wish on my very worst enemy, it is an ailment that robs children of life and health and caused fear among millions upon millions of parents. Nobody wanted what Polio brought to their communities, because it only brought heartache.
This horrible and destructive disease would be, like Smallpox is today, eradicated as a threat to life and health but for the small number of countries where it still exists. It exists unsurprisingly in the socially and intellectually backwards areas that are controlled or heavily influenced by the ideology of Islam. Polio may no longer be a threat to British children but it is in parts of Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. International efforts to eradicate Polio in these places is being hampered not only because some of the Polio areas are remote or difficult to reach but also because Islamic conspiracy theories about the vaccine and the violence in these Islamic areas, stop people from being vaccinated.
I have written before on here about the tragedy of Pakistani Polio vaccination workers being murdered by Islamic extremists and how it is these murders and attacks on vaccination workers like them, that are preventing Polio from being eradicated and many children’s lives being saved. But there are other places that suffer from problems related to Islam and Islamic extremism, such as the Boko Haram controlled areas of Nigeria, where similar problems as exist in Pakistan hamper efforts to wipe out Polio.
According to reports in the Nigerian press, the levels of insecurity caused by the presence and activities of Boko Haram make it difficult and dangerous for Polio vaccination workers to get into the areas where parents are most anxious that their children be vaccinated and protected from Polio. There are also some parents and residents of the area who have unfortunately believed some of the false stories put about by Islamic extremists about how the vaccine causes sterility and other problems. A very interesting report in the Nigerian ‘Nation’ newspaper talks about some of the problems that are being encountered by vaccination workers trying to wipe this awful disease from its last three major hold-out areas. Anti-Polio vaccination workers are trying to alleviate the problems by vaccinating children who are arriving in refugee camps in Nigeria after they escaped from Boko Haram, but the presence of so many un-vaccinated children from Polio endemic areas and who may be carrying Polio, creates the risk that Polio may break out in the camps.
The Nation said:
Islamic extremists made Imana Alhaji Gana’s village in northeastern Nigeria too dangerous for health workers to vaccinate against polio. Now that she and her family have fled to a displacement camp, those workers want to catch her children in time.
Here in the camps housing thousands of families seeking safety from the extremists, health teams are going from tent to tent, inoculating youngsters against the disease that withers limbs and disables children for life.
Ms Gana’s children appear to have been some of the lucky ones. This mother was persuaded of the efficacy of the Polio vaccine and now her children have been immunised against this biological horror. These are now a few more children who will not have to face the possibility of death or disability from this by now highly preventable disease.
The Islamic jihadists of Boko Haram have not only it seems kept the people in the areas they control in a state of extreme oppression but are also helping to perpetuate the ravages of Polio in which Boko Haram have a de-facto suzerainty over. The Nation news site goes on to explain that there are some areas under Boko Haram control that have not had Polio vaccination workers or epidemiologists enter there for over six years. It is horrifying to think of the number of children who may have died or given crippling disabilities because vaccinators could not get into the areas where they were required.
The Nation added:
The complicated fight against polio is yet another way the Nigeria-based extremist group Boko Haram has disrupted life in the northeast, leaving children vulnerable to an entirely preventable disease.
“When such children come to the camps or host communities they become a threat to other children,” said Almai Some, the field co-ordinator in Borno state for the vaccination campaign run by Rotary.
Some of the families arriving are from areas where polio vaccinators have not been able to visit for as long as six years.
In, Borno State, this heavily Islamised and Islamically controlled area of Nigeria, we see similar sorts of off the wall conspiracy theories about the Polio vaccine as we see in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan and no doubt we would find the usual Islamic ‘scholars’ behind the promotion of such guff. There is also violence aimed at those who don’t wish to partake in the delusion that vaccination is a cause of sterility or that it is part of some plot by the ‘Jews’ to weaken Muslims.
The Nation continued:
In a few cases, villagers have reported being threatened by Boko Haram fighters to avoid the polio vaccine. And in 2013 a number of vaccinators were attacked and killed by the extremists, leading some of their colleagues to disguise their vaccine carriers or hide them under their hijabs.
In addition to the threat posed by Boko Haram, some communities are still fearful of the polio vaccine after years of misinformation that it can cause sterility and other health problems.
“Many people now accept the vaccine against polio, but there are still more cases of rejections here and there and we are doing our best to tackle them,” said Digma Zubairu, district head in Shehuri-North.
It’s good to see that there is an increased uptake of the Polio vaccine but it is not nearly enough to stop Borno State and other Islamic parts of Nigeria from continuing to be a reservoir of this awful disease. Personally I don’t think that Nigerians in this region will ever be properly covered by health care and health monitoring until the Nigerian government deal harshly with Boko Haram and that is not something that I can see happening in the near future, violent Islamic thugs are but one of many challenges facing this nation.
I do not believe that it is a coincidence that the areas where Polio is endemic and which are places from which future outbreaks could erupt, are areas controlled or dominated by Islam and particularly backward forms of Islam at that. It is plain to observe by anyone with eyes to see, that the types of societies that have turned into places where people are forced or persuaded to leave their child unprotected against Polio are primarily Islamic ones and this shows up one major difference between these societies and we who live in civilised ones. We choose to protect our children from scourges like Polio but in these lands under the midnight-black cloak of Islam people choose to let their children die or become disabled, because ‘allah wills it’. An ideology that creates societies where children are put at so much risk of harm from an eminently preventable disease is not equal to ours, but markedly and demonstrably inferior.
