From the article:
When the White House announced that the CIA would no longer use vaccination campaigns as cover for intelligence gathering, it came as good news for the renewed global fight to eradicate polio. The effort has been bogged down in Pakistan, where vaccination workers face assassination from the Taliban and widespread suspicion that vaccines are part of a Western plot. The challenge for the U.S. now is to build confidence that vaccinations aren’t part of its clandestine programs—or risk seeing the dream of a polio-free world fall victim to terrorists and the global war against them.
Polio is a disease that can paralyze or even kill. By destroying the nerve that drives the diaphragm, it can cause a slow suffocation. Once a global menace, the world has been on a path toward the eradication of polio thanks to a massive vaccination effort. Between 1980 and 2003, the number of polio cases worldwide fell from 400,000 to 784—a 99.8 percent decline. But the past few years have seen new outbreaks and a rising polio burden.
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