In a move to counter the Taliban’s anti-vaccination campaign, Islamic scholars have begun accompanying health care workers to help them gain access to children living in Pakistan and Afghanistan who have not yet received the polio vaccine. The two bordering nations are the remaining countries where polio is endemic. Shahram Tarakai, the health minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), a province in Pakistan, says that the parents of approximately 100,000 children living on both sides of the border have withheld their children from receiving the life-saving vaccine, and the government has enlisted the help of scholars to educate the parents on the benefits of the oral polio vaccine (OPV). Their goal is to dispel the myth that the vaccine is against Islamic beliefs and affects fertility.

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