Polio hangs on

The polio virus is tenacious, clinging on despite the best efforts of those that would eradicate it. There are now only two countries in the world where polio is endemic — Afghanistan and Pakistan. There has been no reported case in Nigeria for a year and the African continent as a whole is close to being declared polio-free, a truly mighty achievement. Pakistan has seen a 75 per cent reduction in cases this year, which has to be regarded as encouraging, but another case was reported in Quetta on September 2, bringing the number to five this year. On the same day as the child was diagnosed there was a media sensitisation conference in Karachi, aimed at persuading a not-always-helpful media to report the battle against polio in a mature and responsible way.



The conference was organised by the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) that was formed earlier this year; and unlike so many other committees and groups formed to address this that or the other issue is doing the job it was supposed to do and seemingly doing it reasonably effectively. There was some straight talking from Dr Chachar, the EOC coordinator. He pointed out that other less-developed countries had managed to eradicate polio but Pakistan consistently lagged behind in the eradication race. This despite having the technological resources and no lack of funding from a range of national and international sources.

There have been 29 cases of polio across the country in 2015, which truly is a dramatic and commendable drop on the disaster that was 2014. Despite its tenacity the polio virus has limited persistence in the environment — but it thrives in unclean environments where personal hygiene is poor and sanitation facilities equally poor or absent. It persists because there are elements in society that still see the polio eradication teams as part of a nebulous conspiracy by Western nations to limit the fertility of Muslim peoples. A responsible media will debunk such tales and become a party to the battle on the side of the eradicators. Pakistan can and must eradicate polio. There is no other choice.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 4^th,  2015.

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