Pakistan officials consider a new way to boost polio vaccination: prison

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The effort costs nearly $1 billion a year and is largely funded by donor countries and private organizations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In January, roughly 62,000 parents, mostly in Pakistan’s Sindh province, refused polio vaccinations for their children, prompting authorities there to propose the new law with penalties.

Officials said their primary aim was to boost polio immunization rates, though diseases including measles, pneumonia and pertussis are also in the legislation.

Some “fringe elements” believe in a false conspiracy theory — that the vaccines are part of a plot by Western outsiders to sterilize people, Bibi acknowledged.

In some parts of Sindh province, the refusal rate for the polio vaccine is as high as 15%, according to a government official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said it would be extremely challenging to rebuild trust with punitive measures.

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