Pakistan will have to put its act together to quickly, effectively address issue of national, international concern.
ISLAMABAD: The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) for polio, in its latest report, stated in clear terms that Pakistan had ‘broken a promise made to its children’. It stated that, at present, four out of five children suffering from polio in the world are from Pakistan. Pakistan’s fight against polio is lagging far behind that of other polio prevalent countries, the report emphatically states. It has termed the Prime Minister’s Polio Cell a ‘shadow boxing entity’ and recommended the establishment of a body to eradicate the crippling disease from the country on the patterns of efforts that are made to cope with a natural disaster.
The IMB that meets twice a year and consists of nine members who are international experts, reports that the situation in Pakistan, vis-à-vis polio eradication, is ‘dire’. It holds Pakistan responsible for significantly slowing down the global march towards eradicating polio. “Pakistan’s polio virus has spread to Syria, causing a major outbreak amidst the country’s civil war. Pakistan’s polio virus has also spread to Israel, West Bank, Gaza and Iraq,” the report states, adding that “each outbreak overstretched the global programme’s resources and credibility”.
The picture depicted by IMB regarding Pakistan’s polio eradication programme is indeed alarming. All efforts made by successive governments and resources, both national and international, invested over decades to eradicate polio from Pakistan seem to have gone down the drain due to lack of effective implementation of the polio eradication programme in the country. Pakistan’s failure to completely eradicate the menacing disease of polio is now a global issue. Lately, the World Health Organisation (WHO) slapped international travel restrictions on Pakistan, Cameroon and Syria over these countries’ failure to control the spread of the deadly polio virus.
According to the WHO’s restrictions, it will be mandatory for all residents and long-term visitors (over four weeks) from Pakistan, Cameroon and Syria to receive a dose of Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) or Inactivated Poliovirus Vaccine (IPV) between four weeks and 12 months prior to international travel. Recommendations for the travel restrictions were put forward by a 21-member International Health Regulations Emergency Committee which was formed on the directives of WHO board members in Geneva.
Pakistan will have to put its act together to quickly and effectively address this issue of vital national and international concern. It would have to appreciate that any slackness in dealing with this grave issue would lead to very tragic outcomes. The issue of polio is a very serious issue and can be effectively addressed only if Pakistan sincerely realises the gravity of the situation and takes tangible and immediate measures to resolve it.
M Fazal Elahi
Published in The Express Tribune, June 14th, 2014.
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