Polio resurgence

EDITORIAL: Kicking off this year’s anti-polio drive on Sunday at special ceremony Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif administered polio drops to several children.

Speaking on the occasion, he said, “we will win this war despite difficulties,” and thanked the Bill Gates Foundation, World Health Organisation and the government of Saudi Arabia for their assistance.

Thus far he has been unable to apply his famous ‘Shehbaz Speed’ — a hallmark of his efficient, result-oriented style of governance as former Punjab chief minister — to conquer this challenge.

Pakistan is one of the two countries along with Afghanistan where the type1wild poliovirus (WPV1) afflicting children still persists.

Up to the last two weeks of this year as many as 63 cases have been reported. Of these 26 emerged in Balochistan, 18 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 17 in Sindh, and one each in Punjab and the Islamabad capital territory. WPV1 has also been detected in environmental samples taken from eight more districts, bringing the number of affected districts to 83.

Each year, periodic vaccination drives are carried out by thousands of health workers. Yet it remains a story of one step forward and two steps back. The incidence of the disease is high in Balochistan and KP because people in those two provinces frequently move across the border with Afghanistan, as well as due to violent resistance offered by extremist elements who see vaccination as a Western ploy to reduce Muslim population by sterilising children. They have killed over 100 health workers along with their police escorts.

Sadly, on the very first day of the present campaign, polio teams came under attack in KP’s Karak and Bannu districts, leaving a policeman martyred and two health workers injured. No one should lose their life while protecting other people’s children from a crippling disease. Some vaccinators have been putting the mandatory ink mark on children’s thumbs as a proof of job done without administering them polio drops, either out of fear or their own misconception about what the vaccination is meant for.

A few months ago, in Quetta, well over 500 health workers were found suspected of inflating the vaccination numbers, 73 of them had to be suspended right away. Apparently, some of them had personal grievances as reflected in an unexpected development on Sunday.

The Grand Health Alliance of Balochistan (GHAB), representing health professionals — comprising field workers, doctors, nurses and paramedics — has announced boycott of the current anti-polio drive.

Among other things the GHAB has demanded timely payment of salaries and provision of sufficient resources for health workers. A while ago, polio workers in Sindh had also complained of non-payment of their meagre salaries. It’s a crying shame that those put in the harm’s way should not get compensated in an adequate and timely manner.

Besides addressing genuine grievances of health workers, the government must also rethink its polio eradication strategy. The present top to down approach needs to be changed. Local influencers, clerics and others, ought to be encouraged to play a role in incentivising their respective communities to have children vaccinated. Meanwhile, the public awareness effort to remove misgivings some people have about polio drops must go on uninterrupted.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024