Muslim women, religious leaders being enlisted in global campaign to eradicate polio

"The last three countries where polio is still paralyzing children -- Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria -- said on Thursday that they have enlisted Muslim women and religious leaders to allay fears of vaccination and wipe out the disease," Reuters reports. According to Shahnaz Wazir Ali, a special assistant to Pakistan's Prime Minister who is in charge of the polio eradication campaign, more than 20 leading Islamic scholars "have signed an endorsement of the polio eradication program, which is being used to persuade Pakistani parents" to allow their children to be vaccinated, the news agency writes. In Nigeria, the Federation of Muslim Women's Associations is backing a polio immunization campaign there, Reuters notes. "It is not the first time that the world has come tantalizingly close to wiping out the crippling disease," the news agency writes. "'We're so close, there is no time for complacency,' Dr. Christopher Elias, head of global development at the [Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation], a major donor, told Reuters in Geneva," Reuters adds (Nebehay, 5/24).