COVID-19 as Instigator of Bigotry, Chauvinism and Megalomania

Antoine-Jean Gros: Napoleon Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in Jaffa.By Jan LundiusSTOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 24 2021 (IPS) By the end of April 2019, a government campaign to vaccinate more than 40 million children under five against polio in Pakistan was suspended after a series of attacks on health workers and police. On 23 April, a police officer protecting polio workers was gunned down in Bannu, the same day a polio worker was in Lahore seriously wounded by a father “protecting his child from vaccination”, these incidents were followed by the murder of another police and a health worker under his protection. Health workers were also seriously wounded in the districts of Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only countries where polio remains, in all other nations of the world vaccination campaigns have eliminated the disease. In April this year, three female polio vaccine providers were killed in Afghanistan. It is Islamist militants, urged on by fanatic preachers, who oppose polio vaccination, claiming it is part of a “Western conspiracy” to sterilise Muslim children. As in all religions, we find in Islam fanatics who erroneously claim that their holy scriptures demand them to carry out odd and even abominable acts, like killing health workers trying to protect their human fellow beings. Since it does not explicitly mention medical treatment, the Quran cannot be used for anti-vaccination propaganda. However, several hadiths (collection...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Crime & Justice Global Headlines Health Human Rights Humanitarian Emergencies Labour Migration & Refugees Religion TerraViva United Nations Source Type: news