HOW FAR ARE WE FROM A POLIO-FREE PAKISTAN?

ISLAMABAD -- This year's first nationwide anti-polio campaign to immunise children under the age of five against the crippling disease kicked off on January 16. While no new case has been reported in Pakistan so far this year, the move followed a surge in new infections last year that paralysed 20 children, compared to just one infection in 2021.

During the five-day campaign, according to the national eradication programme officials, more than 364,000 health workers were engaged to deliver polio drops and a vitamin A supplement to at least 43 million children in 156 districts across the country.

Viral hotbed

Last year, the 20 polio cases were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), mostly in its violence-hit North Waziristan district on the Afghan border. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio continues to cripple children. Last year, Afghan officials detected two cases, but no more cases were reported so far this year.

A mix of fragile health systems, conflicts, other complex cultural and religious challenges make these countries prone to repeated polio outbreaks. Pakistan has in the past, witnessed frequent attacks on polio teams including women, and policemen deployed to protect door-to-door vaccination campaigns, while militants pre-dominant in K-P's North Waziristan district and areas near the Afghan border, falsely claim that vaccination campaigns are either a Western conspiracy to sterilise children or a cover for espionage.

Women as the linchpin

In our culture, and moreso in a tribal setting, it is unlikely that a male health worker would be allowed into a home by a family, let alone by just women members of a family. But people in the rural areas are more receptive to other women entering their homes as a point of contact to verify the number of children in the household and their vaccination records

Pointing out that no polio campaign has been conducted in the Mehsud belt of South Waziristan for the last six months, because they did not allow the campaign to run, Dr Shehzad Baig, National Coordinator Emergency Operation Centre, emphasised that women as frontline workers are an asset to the polio eradication campaign and hence there is a dire need to improve the security situation for them.

'Ninety-nine percent of women in North and South Waziristan are not a part of polio teams as frontline workers,' he says. 'If women were included in our teams, polio virus would be eradicated from this country in no time.'

Dr...