.... At least 38 people — most of them children — have died from diphtheria in the last year in Indonesia. The epidemic of non-vaccination is so bad that it caused the country to launch a immunization campaign to get vaccines to millions of children and teenagers.
How could such a thing happen? There are several contributing factors, according to Niniek Karmini of the Associated Press, but the one that sticks out to me is that some fundamentalist Muslims in the nation, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, think vaccines violate Islamic law.
The phenomenon has not gone completely unnoticed, and some onlookers say the impact of religious fundamentalism on the rise in diphtheria cases is understated. A recent report pinpoints “religious orthodoxy” as a causative factor in the continuing outbreak. [Friendly Atheist] Read more
