Why the study?
Despite global eradication initiatives, polio persists in Pashtun borderland communities, where faith-based religiosity shaped by Deobandi Ulema obstructs eradication efforts.
This ethnographic study highlights the role of religious leaders in shaping vaccine hesitancy in the Pashtun communities of Pakistan.
May guide targeted engagement in persistent polio reservoirs; hypothesis-generating for addressing sociocultural barriers in eradication campaigns.
The World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with multiple international agencies and the donors initiated The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) to eradicate Poliomyelitis (Polio). Due to the collective human effort polio numbers have decreased by over 99% and the remaining one percent persistence clusters in the Pashtun communities situated on the borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, despite of tireless perpetual collaborations, WHO and The Government of Pakistan are unable to root out polio from the region. The scope of this study is to identify faith-based Pashtun religiosity coproduced and policed by the Deobandi Ulema which has emerged as a main obstruction to achieve a polio-free region. This study employed ethnographic methods and in-person interviews. This study is an attempt to explore the question that how Deobandi Pashtun Ulema educate and shape everyday reluctant religiosity of lay Muslim towards polio vaccine?
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Shah et al. (2026) studied this question.
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