How the bin Laden Raid Put Vaccinators Under the Gun in Pakistan

National Geographic ^ | 2-25-2015 | Tim McGirk

[Citizen Zed]

After the U.S. used a health program to track down the al Qaeda leader, volunteers fighting polio became the hunted.

When Navy SEALs raided a high-walled compound in Pakistan in May 2011 and killed the world's most wanted terrorist, another long-standing source of terror also was facing elimination: polio.

After nearly half a century of vaccinating children and adults around the globe, international health workers finally had cornered the polio virus in a few remaining pockets in northern Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Although polio may lack the panic-inducing effect of Ebola—usually crippling its victims rather than killing them—Americans and Europeans over the age of 60 remember a period when the disease loomed as a terrorizing childhood scourge.

But the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden that spring and the subsequent fallout in Pakistan and the surrounding region—which included targeted assassinations of polio vaccination teams—allowed the virus to fight back. Almost four years later, polio remains a significant threat in Pakistan, which reported 327 new cases in 2014, 60 percent of the world total. This month, gunmen attacked a polio vaccination team in northwestern Pakistan and another four-member team was kidnapped and murdered in the Balochistan region, near the Afghan border.

Meanwhile, polio has surfaced amid the war and chaos in Iraq and Syria, places where the crippling disease, which is spread via person-to-person contact, had been eradicated as recently as 2000.

[Citizen Zed]

If Bush had been president when bin Laden was killed, they'd call this Bush's war on children.

[Vendome]

Well, for sure, they aren’t being needled now...

[edpc]

Even more bizarre was a story, widely circulated after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, that the vaccine contained urine from then President George W. Bush.

Piss be upon them.

[a fool in paradise]

Even more bizarre was a story, widely circulated after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, that the vaccine contained urine from then President George W. Bush.

A story spread by Code Pinko, no doubt.

[5th MEB]

My little sister contracted polio in 1952; crippled her left arm and leg for the rest of her life, a terrible disease.
F#CK the ragheads; hope they all get it, all billion of them.

[LadyDoc]

the problem? It’s not true. Several health care workers, including the Muslim doctor in charge of the program, were killed BEFORE the BenLaden raid.