Illiteracy, conspiracy theories slow polio campaign in Pakistan

It took three months and 30 visits from UN aid workers to convince Haidar Khan to let his son have the polio vaccination.

The day before he relented and allowed Yahia to take the two drops of vaccine, he almost came to blows with the Unicef staff trying to inoculate the four-year-old against the disease, which can bring paralysis in a matter of hours.

Like thousands of parents in Pakistan's deeply conservative northwest, Khan had heard and believed the rumours and conspiracy theories about the vaccine, which have helped the country maintain its unenviable status as one of only three nations in the world where polio is still endemic.

"I heard that the vaccine contains pig, that it's haram forbidden in Islam," the 27-year-old Khan said at his stall in the northwestern city of Peshawar. "Sermons from the mosque loudspeakers said it was an American conspiracy to damage our children."

There have been 30 confirmed cases of polio in Pakistan this year according to the government, 22 of them in the Pashtun tribal areas of the northwest, bordering Afghanistan, where Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants have forged strongholds.

Pakistan had a total of 91 polio cases last year, but the battle to convince people in the tribal areas, where education is limited and deeply conservative values hold sway, is a tough one.

Doctor Syed Irfan Ali Shah, 28, spent two years raising awareness among the local population and now heads the local Unicef team in Peshawar.