Boko Haram

More than 3 million people are on the brink of starvation in northeast Nigeria amid the fight against extremist group, Boko Haram, and curable diseases and polio have resurfaced as well. The UN and other humanitarian groups underestimated the situation’s severity, and it may now be too dangerous to send aid workers to the region.

In an interview with the CBC this week, a World Health Organization official delicately blamed “the suspension of the vaccine in one area,” as if Pakistani health officials had committed some sort of careless lapse. This sort of airbrushing ignores the real cause, which is the systematic war the Taliban is waging against female health workers. Since July, 2012, at least 31 polio vaccination workers have been killed and many others have quit in fear of their and their families’ lives.