Pakistan success stories increase hopes of global polio eradication

The raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011 was blamed for a spike in polio in Pakistan because some used the CIA’s involvement in the mission – it set up a fake immunisation campaign in order to obtain DNA samples – as an excuse to target vaccinators under the pretence that they were associated with the US.

Yet now the World Health Organisation believes the world is on the verge of becoming free of the disease.