Lahore joins list of cities at risk of polio

PM’s focal person on polio says misconceptions amongst parents and influx of virus from Afghanistan key challenges

ISLAMABAD: After Peshawar, Karachi and Quetta, Lahore— for the first time — has been classified as a region which is at high risk of polio after environmental samples from the eastern metropolis tested positive for the virus. This declaration from the country’s top polio official has set alarm bells ringing.

However, the government is aiming to eradicate polio in the country by next year, if only it can overcome the resistance put up by parents.

The Prime Minister’s Focal Person on Polio Eradication Babar Bin Atta spoke to The Express Tribune about the polio challenges of the country.

He stated that during each nationwide anti-polio campaign, they aim to vaccinate around 40 million children who are five-years-of-age and younger. However, he said that they miss around 0.4 million children.

The children missed during the vaccination drive can be divided into two categories. The first includes a cohort of around 150,000 children whose parents have verbally turned away vaccinators. The second group of children is those who were simply not at home when the vaccinators called.

Atta said that the only real stumbling block they were facing in eradicating the virus were those parents who turn away vaccinators.

“The distrust of parents is one of the fundamental reasons for the failure of the polio campaign,” he said, adding, “If we are able to win the trust of parents, it will take only take a single campaign to eradicate polio from the country.”

“Polio vaccine cannot cause infertility in men and it is a challenge to counter this firmly-held misconception amongst the public,” he maintained.

“In Qilla Abdullah, there is an area called Gulistan where parents believe that the polio vaccine causes weakness in children due to which they will not be able to fight for their tribe when they grow up,” he further disclosed.

Atta, who had been appointed as the PM’s focal person on polio replacing Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Senator Ayesha Raza, said that they have been working on devising a polio action plan over the past six months.

The plan, he hopes, will help deliver Pakistan from the crippling disease once and for all.

“Pakistan will be completely free from polio by 2020,” Atta vowed, adding that they were mandating parents to get their children vaccinated.

However, Atta clarified that the incumbent Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government did not support the forceful administration of polio drops to anyone.

“This would only lead to hatred and resentment against the [vaccination] campaigns.”

Another constant challenge that they have to deal with, Atta claimed, was the influx of the disease from across the Pakistan-Afghan border. Afghanistan and Nigeria round out the short list of three countries where the disease is still endemic.

“Fencing work along the border is around 50 per cent complete,” he said, hoping that once the exercise is completed, they expect the transmission of polio from across the Durand Line will be completed halted.

Further, he said that the government is making it compulsory for everyone crossing the two transit points along the Pakistan-Afghan border to take polio drops. Peshawar, he lamented, remains a safe haven for the poliovirus. He added that the virus retains high prevalence in the megalopolis of Karachi, and the Pak-Afghan border areas with Peshawar considered a headquarters for the virus.

“Peshawar and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) alone contributes 70% of the polio cases in Pakistan,” Atta said.

Campaign deficiencies

Atta also pointed out some discrepancies they had noticed in the vaccination campaigns.

“During the campaign, we held raids in several areas and found that some polio workers — instead of administrating the drops — only took fake thumb impressions of the children with support from their parents,” he said.

Pakistan’s polio programme, he said, has 270,000 workers and volunteers. “It is simply not possible that the vaccine malfunctions and remains unreported,” he said.

Asked about the source of the vaccine, he said that it was being procured from Japan.

“We are organizing nine polio campaigns every year, of which four are conducted nationwide while five are restricted to high-risk areas,” he said. The campaign covers all parts of the country but refusals and unavailability of children during campaigns may lead to its failure, he explained.

Conceding that Pakistan remains subject to travel sanctions owing to the incident of polio in the country, Atta vowed to go to every extent to ensure that the travel restrictions on Pakistanis are withdrawn.  “Our purpose is not only to cut the prevalence rate of the poliovirus but to ensure the complete eradication of the polio virus from the country so that we are out of the red list,” he said.

Asked about the recent murder of a polio worker in Mardan, Atta said that no sane society will allow the murder of polio workers.

“We will only breathe with ease after we have won over such negative thinking.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 18^th, 2019.