Gates worries Pakistan Violence blocks Polio Eradication, But is CIA Partly to Blame?

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http://www.juancole.com/2014/01/pakistan-violence-eradication.html

Gates worries Pakistan Violence blocks Polio Eradication, But is CIA Partly to Blame?
By Juan Cole | Jan. 22, 2014

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done an amazing job in targeting diseases for eradication, and the world is very close to getting rid of polio altogether, in part because the Gates in recent years have given their support to the effort, which began in 1988. Cases have fallen 99% since then.

Bill Gates worried yesterday in an interview with AFP, however, that violence in Pakistan and Nigeria would interfere with the goal of wiping the disease out by 2018.

“Nigeria and Pakistan are going to be tough. The Pakistan violence is evil,” he said, according to AFP.

Unfortunately, as the Scientific American explains, the problem of Taliban violence against vaccination workers in Pakistan was exacerbated by the US Central Intelligence Agency, which in its search for Usama Bin Laden in the northern Pakistani city of Abbotabad used agents falsely pretending to be vaccinating against Hepatitis B. The ploy failed, but news of it reached the Taliban.