Star volunteer: Man on a mission against polio

How Risaldar Muhammad Akram’s resolve helped rid his UC of the crippling disease

QUETTA: For Muhammad Akram, the gun slung over his shoulder has had no role to play in the battle he has won.

A risaldar in the Balochistan Levies Force for the past five years, Akram is also a member of the Aghberg Union Council in Quetta – the union council he has helped become a polio-free zone. During his tenure and as a tribe elder of the Pashtun tribe Bazai, Akram realised the peril of polio and the threat it posed for the children of Pakistan. This made his resolve to eliminate the crippling disease even stronger.





According to the World Health Organisation, polio still remains endemic in the country. Balochistan, however, was polio free for more than two years till July 2014. Akram soon took it upon himself to make his rather small but conservative area polio free by targeting 3,800 children under the age of five. Through active participation, he has not only advocated the benefits of the polio drops, but has also successfully convinced Ulema and opinion makers in the vicinity to join hands for the cause. Today, a contingent of 30 personnel of the Levies force under his command is actively combatting polio.

Making the council 100% polio free wasn’t easy. Many believe the main hurdle in eradicating polio from Balochistan is parents’ refusal to get their children vaccinated. But that didn’t discourage Akram. Instead, he used his Levies and tribal sources to reach out to the families and advocate the importance of the polio drops. “There were a total of 40 families in the town that refused the administration of polio drops,” he recalls.



Akram’s role in overturning refusal cases has helped him achieve a significant status in his union council of about 50,000 people. To honour his volunteer work, successive deputy commissioners of Quetta, Shaheed Mansoor Kakar and Dawood Khilji, awarded him the Pride of Performance Award twice.

Quetta has as many as 1,580 personnel deployed for the security of polio workers, with each team of vaccinators flanked by two security personnel, according to the district’s security sources.

Moreover, the Falcon Police, Frontier Corps of Balochistan and SHOs of concerned police stations patrol the areas covered during a certain drive in order to deal with any untoward incidents. It is, however, Akram’s unending effort that has turned his union council into an example for the rest of Quetta.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 1^st,  2016.