Contesting Measles and Vaccination in Pakistan: Cultural Beliefs, Structured Vulnerabilities, Mistrust, and Geo-Politics

This book explores issues surrounding measles and vaccination in Pakistan. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, it focuses on two major outbreaks in Sindh Province and on Pakistan’s vaccination campaigns. The chapters examine the responses to outbreaks and vaccination from various stakeholders including local people, the Pakistani government and the WHO. Inayat Ali reflects on the competing agendas, differing conceptualizations of measles and vaccination, and the factors that lie behind these contestations. Situating outbreaks within the institutionalized form of disparities, he analyzes the rituals used to deal with measles and local resistance to vaccines in Pakistan. The distinct imaginaries and practices related to measles and vaccination are considered in national and global context, and the book makes a valuable contribution to the development of an anthropology of vaccination and medical anthropology of Pakistan.

Inayat Ali is in charge of the Department of Public Health and Allied Sciences and Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He is also a Research Fellow in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna, Austria.