Religious scholars back polio vaccination drive

33 new cases of disease surfaced in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2018

QUETTA: Senior religious scholars have dispelled misinformation regarding polio vaccine and emphasised that edicts should not be issued against vaccination campaigns without research.

The district administration on Saturday held a seminar to engage religious scholars in the war against the poliovirus.

Maulana Anwarul Haq Haqqani, Dr Attaur Rehman, Qari Rasheed, Abdul Raheem Raheemi, an official of the Divisional Task Force against Poliovirus and several other religious scholars attended the seminar.

“The anti-polio vaccine is without any impure material that contradicts with Islam. The religious community has the responsibility to dispel negative myths regarding polio drops,” the scholars said.

Citing the example of India, they said the country had four times more population than Pakistan and had been facing the worst poverty but through appropriate planning and sincere efforts it had defeated polio and today India had been declare as polio-free.



“In 2018, 33 new polio cases surfaced in Pakistan and Afghanistan, among which 12 cases emerged from our country, while Balochistan had three new polio cases. Without contribution of religious leaders of our society, we can’t eradicate polio from our country,” they added.

They said, “Polio vaccine is being administrated to children on the Afghan border because more than 40,000 people travel across the border on a daily basis, while Quetta, Pishin and Killa Abdullah districts have been declared as highly sensitive following detection of poliovirus in their sewage lines.”