Title Dateline: Vaccination Vigilantes - Fighting Polio and the Taliban

Published Australia : SBS ONE, 2015

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Description 1 online resource (streaming video file) (25 min. 24 sec.) ; 153199393 bytes Summary Tuesday's Dateline follows a vaccination vigilante risking her life to give out the polio vaccine. Farhina Touseef is not just fighting a debilitating disease that has no cure, she's also fighting the Taliban."We will go to any lengths to do this work. This is our purpose," she tells reporter Nelufar Hedayat as she travels with armed police to carry out door-to-door vaccinations.She gives out the anti-polio drops to children in the street, and if no adults are home, she controversially enters the houses anyway to treat as many youngsters as she can."We will go to any extent to vaccinate a child. No matter what we must vaccinate every child."Polio is preventable and was nearly eradicated three years ago, but now the disease is again crippling Pakistan's children in rising numbers. It follows a campaign by the Taliban and some extremists, who believe the vaccinations are a Western conspiracy and part of a campaign by America, Israel and the UN to eradicate Muslims."Basically it is used as a bio-weapon," Aisha Usmaini tells Nelufar - she teaches a hard-line version of Islam, and is mother to a young son.And she believes killing health workers is justified."If you are defending something and for your defence you kill someone, that is right... they are killing our generations by giving the polio vaccine."With parents hearing such conflicting views, how can they know what's the right thing to do? Notes Closed captioning in English Event Broadcast 2015-05-12 at 21:30:00 Notes Classification: NC Subject Conspiracy. Poliomyelitis -- Prevention. Poliomyelitis -- Vaccination. Terrorism -- Security measures. Vaccination of children -- Finance. Patient refusal of treatment. Pakistan -- Karachi. Form Streaming video Author Hedayat, Nelufar, reporter Bakar, Abdullah, contributor Khan, Abrar, contributor Touseef, Farhina, contributor Usmaini, Aisha, contributor

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