RESEARCH Open Access

Islamist insurgency and the war against polio: a cross-national analysis of the political determinants of polio Jonathan Kennedy1*, Martin McKee2 and Lawrence King3 Background: There is widespread agreement that civil war obstructs efforts to eradicate polio. It is suggested that Islamist insurgents have a particularly negative effect on vaccination programmes, but this claim is controversial. Methods: We analyse cross-national data for the period 2003–14 using negative binomial regressions to investigate the relationship between Islamist and non-Islamist insurgency and the global distribution of polio. The dependent variable is the annual number of polio cases in a country according to the WHO. Insurgency is operationalized as armed conflict between the state and an insurgent organization resulting in ≥25 battle deaths per year according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme. Insurgencies are divided into Islamist and non-Islamist insurgencies. We control for other possible explanatory variables. Results: Islamist insurgency did not have a significant positive relationship with polio throughout the whole period. But in the past few years – since the assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011 – Islamist insurgency has had a stron