The efforts to spread misinformation of all kinds over social media in Pakistan are not new. All of us are familiar with the attempts made in the past to create confusion and spread misguided information of various types against the polio vaccine. There's almost no doubt that such misinformation campaigns against polio and other diseases, or notably the vaccines against them, have led to suffering and death in all too many cases.

We now have a surge of social media videos and statements by those who seem to claim that they are health experts of some kind against the drive to offer the cervical cancer or anti-HPV virus vaccine to all girls aged between 9 and 14; the campaign began on September 15 and has been approved by the health ministry. This is something that deserves credit for a government which has otherwise done very little. This is the first time that the HPV vaccine will be administered in Pakistan and 13 million doses have already been delivered to the country by Unicef, working with its various partners.

The social media soothsayers claim that the vaccine is intended to make the recipients infertile and is an effort to eliminate Muslims from the world. This is obviously absurd. In their ignorance, some ask why the vaccine is being offered only to young girls and not to others and why all adults cannot be vaccinated if this is truly a vaccine against cancer.

It is not a vaccine against cancer. This is a vaccine designed against........

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