Pakistan has witnessed a sharp drop in the number of families refusing to get their children vaccinated against polio and still nearly half a million children have been left unvaccinated.

The main reason for this is that prayer leaders from mosques have been telling parents not to give polio vaccine to their children, dubbing the campaign a Western ‘conspiracy’ to reduce the population of Muslims.

This false notion was generated soon after the apprehending of the Pakistani doctor for helping the CIA track down Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in 2011 using a fake polio vaccination program, leading the Taliban to ban immunisation in some areas.

Government should make serious efforts to sustain and resolve this matter.

WARDA SAGHIR     Karachi