"146 coverage. Some parents conclude that vaccination is unnecessary and might expose their children to an avoidable risk. Negative rumors about a vaccine are another deterre nt. For example, the myth that vaccination is a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children has deterred parents in northern Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan from allowing their children to be vaccinated against polio (Figure 11). Terrorist attacks have occ urred against polio vaccination teams in all three countries – the only remaining locations where polio had not been eradicated by the WHO target of 2015. Figure 12 . Negative rumors about the oral polio vaccine did not deter this Nigerian child’s parents from bringing her for vaccination. An inevitable consequence of falling vaccination rates in a community is an increase in infections, sometimes with fatal outcomes. In 2014, the WHO warned that progress on eliminating measles had stalled and the number of deaths had begun to rise – from 122 000 in 2012 to 145 700 in 2013. Countries urgently need to prioritize maintaining and improving immunization coverage. Failure to reverse this alarming trend could jeopardize the momentum gener ated by a decade of achievements in reducing measles mortality. Even in countries where over 90% of children are fully vaccinated, uptake rates can plummet under pressure from negative rumors. For example, false claims in 1998 that the MMR vaccine caused a utism led to a sustained fall in vaccinations in the United States and United Kingdom, followed by a significant rise in measles cases and, to a lesser extent,"