Polio Vaccinations in Pakistan May Cause Infertility

Mandatory Polio Vaccinations in Pakistan May Cause Infertility.

May 6, 2014

Polio remains endemic in Pakistan. So does rumor.

 It may be far fetched to believe that there would be such malicious practices and tainted vaccines in third world countries, but on the other hand, so is war.

What was discovered in the vials, was tainted vaccines containing hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) which is common in humans but not in vaccines.  This hCG is harmless in the body but is devastating when injected with a toxoid.  The immune system produces anti-bodies against the injected hCG possibly rendering the recipient infertile.  Other countries encountering tainted vaccines include Pakistan, Philippines, Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil and India.

Photo: Flickr

“My mother believed there was a conspiracy to use polio vaccines to keep population growth down by suppressing the fertility rate,” Wali says, cradling Safa in his arms inside his family’s small two-room house in the northwestern city of Peshawar. “I should have intervened, but I didn’t.”

In the Western world, polio is mostly a forgotten disease, an anachronism that supplicates up images of iron lungs and March of Dimes posters. In Pakistan, however, polio remains a pestilence that international health organizations (WHO)  have miserably failed to eradicate.

As of Oct. 13, 111 cases of polio had been recorded this year in Pakistan. Second only to the African nation of Chad, where 114 cases have been reported this year. Last year, Pakistan logged 144 cases of polio.

Today, Pakistan is one of just four countries where polio is thought to be endemic,  the other three are Afghanistan, India and Nigeria.

Numerous factors have stood in the way of eradication. In the country’s ephemeral tribal areas along the Afghan border, the war against Islamic militants have made it conflicting for vaccination teams to make the rounds in villages and towns.   The migration of Pakistanis from the country’s northwest to over populated cities such as Karachi and Quetta has further spread the disease.

Underlying those factors, however, is an intense mistrust among some Pakistanis for the vaccinations and the people who supply and administer them. Radical clerics seed rumors that vaccinations are un-Islamic because they are made from substances derived from pigs, or that they cause infertility. Some clerics try to convince parents that polio vaccines are made from the urine of Satan.

The reluctance by some Pakistanis to trust polio vaccinations programs is also motivated by a belief that the U.S. is behind the campaigns. Anti-American sentiments are more responsive than ever in the country  this year by the case of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who shot to death two Pakistanis in Lahore in January, as well as by President Obama’s decision to not inform Pakistani leaders in advance about the U.S. operation against Osama bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad in May.

Parents’ fears about polio immunization drives were concocted by a CIA-orchestrated phony vaccination campaign aimed at obtaining DNA evidence from Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad in the weeks before the U.S. commando raid that killed him.

“People were already suspicious of the objectives of these polio vaccination drives,” says Zaid Khan, 33, a shopkeeper who sells tea leaves in the Peshawar neighborhood of Rashid Garhi, where the refusal rate is high. “The fake campaign in Abbottabad strengthened parents’ resolve against the polio drives. It gave them proof that America’s intentions are bad.”

Mandatory polio Vaccinations in Pakistan May Cause Infertility.