Terrorist attacks complicate Pakistan’s anti-polio campaign

Terrorist attacks on volunteers of anti-polio teams in Karachi and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday and Wednesday, which claimed lives of five women and a male in only 24 hours, have raised serious concern about the success of the campaign in Pakistan.

All law enforcement agencies have miserably failed to apprehend the culprits who fled after attacking the police teams in four different areas in Karachi and Peshawar.

There has been no let up in targeted attacks on polio vaccination teams and unidentified gunmen fired on workers at four places in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Wednesday, killing a lady supervisor and her driver and injuring a worker and a passerby. Police said that four women polio campaigners escaped unhurt in attack in Nowshehra district.

The fast increasing attacks on polio workers proved to be a serious setback for the drive to root out virus in the country, the World Health Organization (WHO), has listed among as one of three countries, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, where polio is still endemic.

The WHO and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said after the attacks that those killed were among thousands who work selflessly across Pakistan to eradicate polio. “Such attacks deprive Pakistan’s most vulnerable populations – especially children – of basic life-saving health interventions,” they said in a joint statement.

The WHO in a study published in November this year reported 56 polio cases in Pakistan in 2012, the number highest than Afghanistan. According to the WHO 173 people were affected in Pakistan last year.

Many in the country give polio drops to their children, however some elements have opposed polio vaccination on their own conclusion of its possible impact. Some come up with argument that polio drops could affect the procreative potency of future generations. Few religious leaders has created confusion in the mind of people in backward areas.

Taliban have imposed a ban on polio vaccination in North and South Waziristan to what they call a sign of protest against the U.S. drone strikes in the tribal regions. It means the U.S. will rain missiles into Pakistan tribal areas and the militants ban may lead to disability of some children in own areas.

The CIA blunder to run a fake vaccination campaign to reach Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad had badly affected the campaign in Pakistan, according to world health organizations. The U.S. mistake encouraged the militants to defend their restrictions on polio drive as they say the workers can work as spies.

According to the study published last month in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, mentioned other factors hampering the programme’s success in Pakistan include military conflict, massive floods, poor routine immunization services and large nomadic and internally displaced populations.

The government and its law enforcement agencies have also failed to ensure smooth anti-polio campaign in the sensitive areas of country despite foreign funding. The official awareness campaign also seems to be ineffective to convince those who have suspicious about polio drops.

The WHO says polio will not be eliminated in Pakistan unless the national programme reaches out to parents from high-risk groups, such as low-income Pashtun communities who suffer the greatest burden of this disease.

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Posted by Tahir Khan on Dec 19 2012. Filed under Health, Latest News, National, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.