FaithWorld

(A local health worker carries vaccination kits into a vehicle at a distribution centre ahead of the start of a nationwide polio immunization campaign  in Lagos February 21, 2011. REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye)

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Mercy Ahun is Special Representative to Eligible Countries for GAVI, a public-private partnership that works with governments, vaccine producers, civil society organizations and others to expand access to vaccines and immunization in the developing world.

By Mercy Ahun

Attacks on polio immunization workers in Pakistan have drowned out the celebrations of so much recent success in immunization work. Pakistan remains one of only three countries in the world where polio still exists, but efforts to bring vaccines to all corners of the country have been politicized to a tragic extent.

In almost every country in the world—including Pakistan—expanded access to old and new vaccines has saved hundreds of millions of children’s lives. Working together since 2000, global organizations, country governments and civil society have prevented more than five-and-a-half million deaths.

Newer vaccines have just begun the task of protecting children against pneumococcal and diarrheal diseases, among others. We’re also on the verge of achieving eradication of polio. Yet as we celebrate our success, we’re also saddened by the tragic murders of health workers not just in Pakistan, but in Nigeria, South Sudan, and other insecure countries.

(Security officials assess the scene of a bomb blast in Nigeria’s northern city of Kaduna April 8, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer )

Nigeria’s government is not doing enough to tackle religious violence in central Nigeria, where more than 100 people have been killed since March, a U.S. government agency said on Monday.

Plateau state and other parts of the “Middle Belt” have suffered for decades from violence linked to land disputes between the semi-nomadic, cattle-herding Muslim Fulani and settled Christian Berom farmers.

(A woman strolls past a poster supporting Cardinal Peter Turkson in front of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome March 1, 2013.  REUTERS/ Max Rossi)

Spoof  “vote for Turkson” posters have popped up in Rome along walls still plastered with campaign posters from Italy’s general election on Sunday and Monday. Campaigning for the papacy is officially forbidden and even suggesting one is a candidate is usually enough to end any cardinal’s chances of ascending to the throne of Saint Peter.

Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson is the Irish bookmakers’ favorite to replace Pope Benedict, putting a non-European in pole position to lead the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church for the first time in more than a millennium.

(Cardinal Peter Turkson (2nd L) during the Ash Wednesday mass at the Vatican February 13, 2013. REUTERS/ Alessandro Bianchi )

Ghana’s Peter Turkson is the Irish bookmakers’ favorite to replace Pope Benedict, putting a non-European in pole position to lead the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church for the first time in more than a millennium.

Irish bookmaker Paddy Power offered odds of 11/4 against for Turkson, meaning successful punters would win 11 pounds for every four staked, while Britain’s second largest bookmaker Ladbrokes offered odds of 5/2 against.

(Kenyan worshipers arrive at the All Saints Cathedral Church for a evening mass at the capital Nairobi, November 3, 2003. REUTERS/Anthony Niguna)

Senior African Anglican leaders have lined up to denounce the Church of England’s decision to allow celibate gay bishops, warning it would only widen the divisions within the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Archbishop Nicholas Okoh of Nigeria, effectively the largest province in the Communion, said such reforms “could very well shatter whatever hopes we had for healing and reconciliation within our beloved Communion.”

The Church of England voted not to ordain female bishops last week, a move widely seen as defying the modern world. Much justification was given for this view.

Both the retiring and the incoming archbishops of Canterbury deplored the vote. The former, the scholarly (and “greatly saddened”) Rowan Williams, said, “It seems as if we are willfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of … wider society.” The incoming Justin Welby took a more upbeat view, one appropriate for a former senior oil executive. “There is a lot to be done,” he said, “but I am absolutely confident that at some point I will consecrate a woman bishop.” Still, Welby conceded that the vote was “a pretty grim day for the whole church.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron, pausing in the midst of his battle to reduce European Union spending, snapped that the church needed to “get with the program” and that his task was, while respecting its autonomy, to give it a “sharp prod.” A succession of clergy, men and women, lamented the decision, some crying demonstratively on the street outside the hall where the synod – the church’s parliament – met.

Both Pakistan and Egypt had much to learn from each other this week.

On the foreign policy front, if Pakistan ever had aspirations to play the central role as the leader of Muslim unity, it had a salutary lesson in the way Egypt played its cards. Barely a week ago, Pakistan was looking forward to hosting Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, who was to be given the rare honour of addressing a joint session of parliament.

Mursi – the first president to emerge from the Muslim Brotherhood - was due in Islamabad for a summit meeting of the Developing-8 Islamic countries, which also includes Iran, Turkey and Nigeria among others.  The Jamaat-e-Islami (which sees itself as the ideological sibling of the Brotherhood - both were founded in the first half of the 20th century as anti-imperial Islamist  movements in British India and Egypt) proclaimed on its Twitter feed about how much it looked forward to greeting Mursi in Pakistan.

And then Mursi cancelled, his office saying he wanted to stay at home to monitor the ceasefire he had just brokered in Gaza.

The Bishop of Durham, and the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, smiles during a news conference at Lambeth Palace in London November 9, 2012.  REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

Rowan Williams once said the next Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the fractious Anglican wing of world Christianity, needs “the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros”.

He overlooked the calm and patient negotiating skills that probably helped his successor Justin Welby clinch the job.

(Soldiers search a car for suspected explosives along a road in Nigeria’s northern city of Kano January 22, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer)

Human rights abuses committed by Nigeria’s security forces in their fight against Islamist sect Boko Haram are fuelling the very insurgency they are meant to quell, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

Boko Haram says it wants to create an Islamic state in Nigeria and its fighters have killed hundreds in bomb and gun attacks targeting security forces, politicians and civilians since launching an uprising in 2009. The sect has become the No. 1 security threat to Africa’s top energy producer.

(Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba at the Al-Masjid al-Haram (Grand mosque) in Mecca October 31, 2011. REUTERS/Ammar Awad )

Nigeria has resumed flights to Saudi Arabia for the annual haj pilgrimage, ending a diplomatic row over the detention of hundreds of female pilgrims for arriving unaccompanied by men, the country’s haj commission has said.

Saudi authorities have deported more than 600 female Nigerian pilgrims and detained hundreds for trying to visit the Islamic holy city of Mecca without male relatives. Nigeria suspended flights to Saudi last week.