Eliminating polio from Pakistan

Pakistan’s polio eradication ef

forts have failed to bear success

so far because of, among others, weak service delivery, persisting conflict in northern areas and waning confidence of families. Last year, Pakistan reported the highest number of polio cases in a decade, 198 in total, compared to 144 in 2010, while Afghanistan had 81 cases, up from 30 the year before, according to a study published in the international Lancet medial journal.

Newly introduced vaccines, the study says, had the potential to eliminate polio in these countries if sufficient numbers of children could be reached. In fact, the elimination of polio disease in affected parts of the country has been has become difficult on account of armed conflict, security concerns, cultural barriers and natural disasters that have posed challenges to the accessibility of those engaged in administration of polio drops. Poliomyelitis, a crippling disease of the nervous system, was considered endemic in more than 125 countries in 1988. But today in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria only countries with the diseases still at large. India was removed from it in February thanks to the impact of a massive vaccination campaign, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) website. The highly infectious disease hits mainly the under-fives, causing paralysis in a matter of hours and in some cases it can become fatal.

While Pakistan expedited recently, amid international pressures, to wipe out the viral disease, an Urdu-language pamphlet distributed last month by militants in Wana, a tribal town of South Waziristan Agency in FATA, has put the country’s anti-polio vaccination drive in sheer jeopardy. Mullah Nazir, commander of his own faction of the Taliban in South Waziristan, has warned health workers in the pamphlet to stay away from polio vaccination drives or face dire consequences. He has linked allowing polio and other foreign-funded vaccination drives in Wana sub division to ceasing US drone operations in the agency. These warnings have further strengthened fears of the health workers engaged in the anti-polio campaigns of losing their lives, if they continued with polio vaccination administration activities in the FATA areas.

The warning is not the first of its kind to pour in from tribal militants since a Pakistani doctor was convicted of assisting the CIA in locating former Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by running a fake polio vaccination campaign in Abbottabad last year. Mullah Nazir’s handout calls the “traitor Dr Shakeel Afridi’s fake campaign in Abbottabad” proof that “infidel forces are using media, education and development as a tool to gag Muslims. A ban in Wana was put in place earlier in the North Waziristan Agency by the Hafiz Gul Bahadar faction of the Taliban, who are alleged by the United States of having close ties to Al Qaeda and the Haqqani network. These two militant factions have remained the key target of the US drones FATA, as the US-led coalition forces blame them of providing refugee to al Qaeda-linked foreign fighters besides sending them across the border into Afghanistan.

The announcements by the both Taliban groups may prove a serious blow to the already quivering anti-polio drive in FATA where polio cases are on the rise, commitment of some officials to continue with their endeavours to eradicating the lethal infectious virus remains unshaken. Dr Janbaz Afridi, director of the Expanded Programme of Immunisation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reportedly said while diplomatic channels are being utilised and the local tribal elders are persuaded to bolster government’s anti-polio efforts, hopefully the post-warning situation will ease.