Child getting polio drops (file photo)

AFP: Two-year-old Farid should have been vaccinated against polio, but his family — like many in rural Afghanistan — believed the conspiracy theories and refused to have him inoculated.  Militants and religious leaders tell the community that vaccines are a Western conspiracy aiming to sterilise Muslim children, or that such programmes are an elaborate cover for Western or Afghan government spies. The CIA used a fake immunisation campaign to help track down Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where US forces later killed him in 2011, which has fuelled the conspiracy theories. Fears run so deep that some parents force their children to vomit after they receive the compulsory polio drops in government-run health centres. Click here to read more (external link).