Polio Drops Linked to Infertility, Godhra Muslims Burn Copies of Urdu Monthly

According to this news report, communication strategies were used to offset a "misinformation campaign" that threatened to hamper a mass polio vaccination drive scheduled to be carried out in Panchmahals district, India, from November 11-13 2006. Specifically, a week before the vaccination campaign, unidentified persons distributed an article widely in Muslim localities of Godhra. In that article, published in the September 2006 issue of the Urdu monthly Taameer-e-Hayaat, the author suggested that Muslim leaders had issued a fatwa (a legal pronouncement in Islam) against polio drops and that "the president of Nigeria's Supreme Council of Sharia Laws Ibrahim Datti, himself a well-known physician, has accused the United States of mixing certain elements into the polio vaccines that causes infertility." Questioning the effectiveness of the vaccine, the author also quoted Hindi newspaper reports indicating that many children had been struck by polio even after being given the vaccine. He went on to challenge Muslim religious leaders to come out with facts against his arguments, and promised to publish them in the magazine.

Officials drew the cooperation of religious leaders to spur participation in the vaccination campaign, even after the confusion and uproar caused by the distribution of the article (local Muslims publicly burned copies of it). The goal was to persuade people that Muslim clerics did in fact not issue the fatwa, and to correct misinformation and rumours that might have otherwise compromised the vaccination efforts. District authorities held a series of meetings with religious and social leaders to convince them that polio drops were safe, and that the propaganda was false and baseless. According to officials in charge of the vaccination campaign, local Muslim leaders reportedly cooperated fully, participating in meetings such as one at which district authorities spoke about the significance of the vaccine. A letter in support of the polio vaccine - from the principal of the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University - was read in front of the audience to correct misunderstandings caused by the circulation of the article. Drawing again on the power of religion, officials also circulated materials explaining that even Saudi Arabia did not permit children to go to Mecca and Madina for the Haj pilgrimage if they had not received doses of the polio vaccine.