WASHINGTON // A fake vaccination drive reportedly organised by the Central Intelligence Agency as part of its operation to track down Osama bin Laden has caused outrage among health organisations, who worry that, true or not, the allegations could have dramatic consequences.
Medecins Sans Frontier said the "mere suggestion that the provision of medical care was carried out under false pretences damages public perception of the true purpose of medical action". The World Health Organisation warned that such allegations could lead to "an erosion of public trust" leading to a "resurgence of diseases".
The alleged fake vaccination drive was reported in The Guardian newspaper last week, which wrote that the CIA recruited a Pakistani doctor to set up a Hepatitis B vaccination drive in Abbottabad in northern Pakistan.
The idea was to gain entry to the compound where bin Laden was suspected of hiding and obtain DNA samples from those living there to compare them to some obtained from bin Laden's sister.
The doctor who reportedly organized the drive, Shakil Afridi, was arrested in late May by the Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI), Pakistan's intelligence agency, for working for a foreign intelligence agency, the The Guardian reported.
The paper claims the US is pressuring Pakistan to allow the doctor and his family to be resettled in the US, but it is not clear whether Dr Afridi's fate was a topic for discussion between the visiting Shuja Pasha, the head of the ISI, and US officials, in meetings in Washington on Thursday.
Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported on Thursday that Dr Afridi's family, from Peshawar in north-west Pakistan, went into hiding soon after the reports .
The CIA is not commenting and it is not clear whether any ploy worked. According to a former CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, some elements of the allegations ring true and others don't.
The timing of the drive, which reportedly started in Abbottabad in March and moved to the neighbourhood of the bin Laden compound in April, only weeks before the US Navy Seals raid that killed bin Laden, presented an unusually narrow timeframe, he said.
"There have traditionally been air gaps put between operatives using covers of academics, journalists, and development and aid workers," the former CIA official said. This, he said, is partly for fear of exposure and partly to avoid the kind of "blowback" to international aid organisations that are now expressing their concerns.
Other aspects of the reported vaccination sting sound "feasible", however, the former official said.
"My assessment is that the Osama bin Laden operation would go to any lengths to confirm the target's identity 100 per cent and avoid the horror of a Lillehammer-like mistaken identity," the official said, referring to a botched 1973 Mossad operation that resulted in the murder of a Moroccan waiter in Norway, the arrest of most of the team behind the operation and the unravelling of much of the Israeli intelligence agency's European infrastructure.
The former official said, "DNA identification of high-value targets is an established procedure, especially in terms of being able to confirm that the hit was successful."
The former official also suggested that it was unlikely that if the drive was a CIA front, Mr Afridi knew whom he was working for.
"I find it unthinkable that in the case of such a sensitive operation, such a foreign asset could be aware of the real target and purpose of his work," he said.
Whether true or not, however, health experts worry that the allegations could damage the reputations of all humanitarian organisations and affect efforts to control dangerous diseases.
"Our fear is mostly about the perception that this creates in a context where medical care or humanitarian assistance becomes highly politicised," said Sophie Delaunay, executive Director for Medecins Sans Frontier-USA.
Even though the alleged fake vaccination drive is not reported to have been undertaken under the umbrella of any particular organisation, it could affect the reputation of all, Ms Delaunay said.
"Whether these allegations are true or not, it does reveal the possibility for actors to conduct fake vaccination campaigns. In the end, it is the population that needs the medical care that will suffer," she said.
Some health experts blame an erosion of trust in health providers as partly responsible for the failure to completely eradicate polio from Africa. In the 1980s, the WHO launched an ambitious plan to eradicate polio from Africa and by 2003; the disease was primarily consigned to areas of Nigeria.
But fears among Muslim leaders in the country after the launch of George W Bush's War on Terror that the vaccines were a ploy to spread Aids and other diseases among Muslims ultimately brought the effort to a halt, and Nigeria still suffers from polio today.
"This is not the first time that allegations and conspiracy theories related to immunization have arisen," the WHO said Thursday. "On several occasions such allegations have led to an erosion of public trust in immunization, and consequently resurgence of diseases that the vaccines aim to prevent."
