Global Efforts to Eradicate Polio: Backgrounder

This webpage from the Council on Foreign Relations serves as a resource for communication practitioners and others seeking to understand - and access resources about - the global effort to eradicate polio. Clicking on each of the subheadings in the background brings the reader to information and multiple URLs leading to further data - for example, the reasons that polio remains endemic mostly in conflict zones. "A major challenge to eradicating polio is mistrust of the West and vaccine programs. Despite national governments' public support for polio eradication efforts, there is powerful opposition to vaccines in some afflicted areas....Misinformation has undermined polio vaccine campaigns in Pakistan and Nigeria." (See Related Summaries, below.)

In addition to exploring what polio is and what has been done in the past in an effort to eradicate it (and the challenges that has entailed), the backgrounder examines current efforts, such as the fact that "[g]overnments and health advocates have appealed to influential Muslim clerics to condone polio vaccination. In 2013 Maulana Sami ul-Haq, a prominent Pakistani cleric whose seminary is thought to wield influence with the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, issued a fatwa in support of polio vaccination. Clerics in northern Nigeria have come out in support of vaccination as well."

The backgrounder concludes with a section on the cost of eradicating polio along with a list of additional resources.