The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN announced on Monday.
Afghanistan is one of two countries where the spread of this potentially deadly and paralyzing disease has never been stopped. The other is Pakistan.
News of the suspension was relayed to UN agencies just before the start of the September vaccination campaign.
No reason was given for the suspension, and no one in the Taliban-controlled government was immediately available for comment.
A senior World Health Organization (WHO) official said he was aware of discussions to move away from door-to-door vaccinations and instead hold vaccinations in places like mosques.
WHO has confirmed 18 cases of polio in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023.
“The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is aware of recent political discussions about moving from door-to-door vaccination campaigns to site-based vaccination in some areas of Afghanistan,” said WHO’s Dr Hamid Jafari.
“Partners are discussing and understanding the scope and impact of any changes in current policy.”
Polio eradication in serious blow
Anti-polio campaigns in neighboring Pakistan are regularly marred by violence, with activists targeting vaccination teams and the police officers tasked with protecting them, falsely claiming the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
The suspension of the September campaign is a major blow to polio eradication in Afghanistan.
Last August, WHO reported that Afghanistan and Pakistan were continuing to implement an “intensive and synchronized campaign” focused on improving vaccination coverage in endemic areas and responding effectively and rapidly to detections elsewhere.
During a nationwide campaign in June 2024, Afghanistan used a door-to-door vaccination strategy for the first time in five years, a tactic that reached the majority of targeted children, according to WHO.
But the southern province of Kandahar, where Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada is based, has used vaccination campaigns at sites or mosques, which are less effective than going to people’s homes.
Kandahar continues to have a large number of vulnerable children because the vaccination campaign is not being conducted door-to-door, WHO said. “In Afghanistan, the overall participation of women in vaccination campaigns remains around 20%, leading to inadequate access to all children in some areas,” it said.
Any setback in Afghanistan poses a risk to the programme in Pakistan because of large population movements, WHO warned last month.
Another setback for the initiative
The suspension of the campaign is the latest setback in the global effort to curb polio. The campaign, which costs about US$1 billion a year, has missed several deadlines to eradicate the disease and technical errors in the vaccination strategy set by WHO and its partners have been costly.
The oral vaccine also inadvertently triggered outbreaks in dozens of countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East and now accounts for the majority of polio cases worldwide.
This was seen recently in Gaza, where a baby was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of polio first seen in the oral vaccine, marking the first case in the territory in more than 25 years.