PHOTO: REUTERS
QUETTA: At the Pak-Afghan Friendship Gate in Chaman, a town in Balochistan bordering Afghanistan, Allauddin checks the hands of each child entering Pakistan from the neighbouring country, looking for
a violet mark which indicates
that they have been vaccinated against polio.
Allauddin is the supervisor of the area’s polio vaccinators, one of the frontline soldiers in the fight against the dreaded disease, which continues to cripple children in the three remaining countries of the world — Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.
At the Chaman border crossing, not only children up till the age of five but everyone entering the country is being administered vaccine drops to stop the circulation of polio virus.
PHOTO: REUTERSBibi Haseena has received her vaccination card after being administered polio drops at the Friendship Gate. She has come from Helmand, Afghanistan for the treatment of her daughter in Karachi.
“On an average, more than 30,000 to 40,000 people cross the Friendship Gate every day,” says Allauddin. “Most people arrive because of their trade and business activities while others have relatives residing in villages near the border. Many also come seeking medical treatment in the hospitals of Quetta and Karachi,” he adds.
“There are 100 polio teams with eight area supervisors deployed at the gate but it’s very difficult to vaccinate or check the status of vaccination of people in such large numbers who are already in a hurry,” he explains.
“These teams work in two shifts from morning to evening.”
Keeping in view the population movement and refusal cases as well as militants imposing a ban on vaccination in Afghanistan, the Pakistani government has introduced all age group vaccination (AAGV) at the Friendship Gate this year.
“Under this initiative, everyone over the age of is vaccinated and given a polio vaccination card which is valid for a year,” says Rashid Razzaq, the coordinator of the Emergency Operations Centre, Balochistan.
“Children up till the age of 10 are vaccinated every time they cross the border,” he added.
“We have vaccinated 776,000 people at the Friendship Gate and around 400,000 have been issued vaccination cards.”
Chaman is located in Balochistan’s Qilla Abdullah district, which along with Quetta and Pishin, are among the high-risk areas for polio.
“We share a 1,100-kilometre long border with Afghanistan and all polio high-risk districts, Quetta, Pishin and Qilla Abdullah, lie next to it,” said Dr Aftab Kakar, the head of the National Stop Transmission of Polio (NSTOP) team in Balochistan.
“The extensive population movement across the border is major factor [in the spread of the polio virus],” he adds. In Qilla Abdullah, three polio cases were reported this year.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 23rd, 2019.
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