Afghanistan: Taliban Should Stop Blocking Polio Teams

On July 7, 2014, the Taliban in Afghanistan issued a statement that accused mobile polio vaccination teams of “spying”, causing many providers of these life-saving treatments to back out of the region, one of the last hotbeds of polio infections on the planet. Since as early as February 2014, the Taliban have prohibited the Afghan Public Health Ministry from deploying mobile vaccination teams in the Helmand province. After the accusations put out in the July statement, Human Rights Watch has reported on the subsequent cessation of efforts by various groups providing vaccinations, leaving a large group of vulnerable children with no chance of receiving treatments that can prevent death and serious physical disabilities caused by polio.

Afghanistan is one of only three countries in the world where wild polio virus remains endemic, and international health experts consider Helmand and Kandahar provinces to be the country’s epicenters of polio infection. Without the mobile vaccination teams, will the global eradication campaign of this disease that has crippled and killed millions be in jeopardy? 

Find out more at hrw.org