One million children miss polio vaccination

Children left unvaccinated as unrest and flooding limited access while some parents viewed campaign as "conspiracy".

ISLAMABAD: Almost one million children were left out of a polio vaccination drive which ended Wednesday, officials said, as unrest and flooding limited access and some parents viewed the campaign as a Western "conspiracy".

Data obtained by AFP showed that some 998,569 children of the 32 million targeted during the three-day nationwide drive, backed by the government and World Health Organisation, were left unvaccinated against the crippling disease.

Last year, Shakil Afridi was jailed for helping the CIA track down al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden using a fake hepatitis vaccination programme, leading the Taliban to ban immunisation in some areas.

WHO Senior Coordinator for Polio Vaccination Dr Elias Durry said the huge number of missed children was a "cause of concern".

"While we can celebrate the achievement of vaccinating millions of children during every polio campaign, finding and vaccinating the repeatedly missed children should be the top priority of all the polio teams across the country."

Government health officials said that most of the one million children remained unvaccinated because of access issues, unrest in Balochistan province and  flooding in many parts of Sindh.

They added many parents in militancy-hit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa still view immunisation as a "conspiracy."

In less turbulent areas, health workers failed to carry-out follow up visits or make enough effort to visit houses "far away".

Unknown gunmen on Tuesday killed a polio vaccinator in the Killi Jeo area of Quetta, a day after the campaign kicked off, senior government official Tariq Mengal told AFP.

Pakistan is one of only three countries where the highly infectious crippling disease remains endemic, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria.

There have been 30 confirmed cases of polio in Pakistan this year according to the government, 22 of them in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.