Polio priorities

It is the Cell’s responsibility to drop anyone showing lack of will and instead choose team that will deliver results.

And so it is revealed that perhaps one of the major impediments to battling polio is the will of government stakeholders themselves. It is embarrassing that government health representatives from Gilgit-Baltistan and Punjab were the only ones present at a recent high-level meeting called by the prime minister’s Polio Monitoring Cell. Not only should all provincial health ministers have been at the meeting, but considering that Pakistan has been attempting to eradicate polio for decades now, even those in higher positions of power should have been there to lead provincial representatives.

Ideally, officials who failed to attend the meeting should be considered for demotions or impeachment as they displayed a lack of motivation towards their responsibilities, likewise indicating unclear intentions and mixed priorities towards battling polio. Once elected, it is not the officials’ responsibility to show commitment as that should have been gauged prior to electing or appointing them; once they are in office, we move beyond this basic question. Their real responsibility is to devise and implement effective plans to combat polio. Short-term campaigns and drives are being held but there is a need for long-term vision and planning as well.

It seems that maybe the primary cause this country does not advance, or does so at a snail’s pace, is that once officials are elected — or usually in Pakistan’s case, appointed — to a certain stature or salary, they neglect their duties to the office and to the people. Rather than serving the people, they falsely believe that citizens are there to serve them. And alas, this is why we are pathetically one of only three countries in the world with a polio epidemic still on our hands. As a country facing mass poverty and starvation, the people certainly do not have resources to waste on useless officials. In this case, it is the Cell’s responsibility to drop anyone showing a lack of will and instead choose a team of people that will deliver results. Passive attitudes will not work.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 29^th, 2014.

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