The ongoing fear mongering over measle vaccinations in the US and Europe is a point of interest on today’s Right Hook, with George talking to Temple Street, Children’s University Hospital professor of paediatrics Alf Nicholson today to find out why going viral is a bad idea.
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As cases of measles continue to rage across the US, a very unlikely source has entered into the debate – ISIS. The terrorist organisation, whose torture and execution of civilian hostages has shocked the world, appeared to be openly mocking anti-vaccination movements around the world when it uploaded a series of photos showing children receiving inoculation.
All of the images below were posted onto nasher.me, a website popular with ISIS for posting images of everyday life from inside areas controlled by the Islamic radicals. The vaccination images appear to show Syrian children getting the disease-eradicating vaccinations in the Damascus suburb of Al-Hajar al-Aswad.
While the Syrian capital and the country’s second-largest city is not under ISIS control, experts on the ongoing situation in the country claim that the organisation has a number of strongholds in the southern suburbs, including the areas where these photographs were allegedly taken.
The images show boys and girls taking oral vaccines, a pink liquid solution that the World Health Organisation identifies as being the same shade and hue of the polio vaccine.
In early February, the Integrated Regional Information Networks, a humanitarian current affairs agency, reported that ISIS forces in Syria had been allowing international aid groups to enter areas under their control in order to administer vaccines.
While the number of cases of polio have dramatically increased in Syria since the country entered into civil war in 2011, the timing of the photo is being regarded as a propaganda play to undermine the US’ vocal anti-vaccine lobby.
Syria’s levels of polio vaccination were almost 100 percent prior to its current crisis, but that level has now fallen to just more than 50 percent. Buzzfeed reports that the re-emergence of the disease is the most likely reason why ISIS is not taking hostage and executing aid volunteers attempting to vaccinate Syrian children from infection.
[All images: ISIS Media]
H/T: Buzzfeed
