As Pakistan reported its third polio case of the year, Health Minister Abdul Qadir Patel on Sunday expressed his commitment to the fight against polio.
A one-year-old boy was paralysed after being infected with wild poliovirus in North Waziristan. The child had an onset of paralysis on May 2 in Miranshah while the case was confirmed by the Pakistan National Polio Laboratory at the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad, on May 14.
“Another child will live with lifelong physical disabilities because of this preventable disease,” Patel said. “As a country, we must understand the human cost of not finishing polio from Pakistan; every case is a huge tragedy.”
The minister added that in the absence of any cure for poliovirus, the only way to protect children from lifelong disabilities is to vaccinate them in each campaign.
He said the authorities had taken emergency measures in southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) to save children from wild poliovirus and these measures have now been further extended and intensified.
“I am personally monitoring all polio eradication efforts,” the health minister said. “Recently, I visited K-P after the outbreak and met families of the affected children.”
He added that he will visit high-risk areas to oversee on-ground operations.
Health Secretary Aamir Ashraf Khawaja said that after the first child was paralysed, they feared that there would be more polio cases because of how infectious this virus is. “Unfortunately, there may be more [cases] until every child is reached by the vaccine,” he added.
Six districts in southern K-P had been identified by authorities as high-risk areas and an emergency action plan was initiated to reach more children than before. Southern K-P is most at risk after wild poliovirus was detected in environmental samples in the last quarter of 2021. Positive environmental samples of wild poliovirus in K-P had been found in DI Khan and Bannu divisions.
In 2020, the K-P reported 22 cases, while no wild poliovirus cases were recorded in the province last year.
On Wednesday, Pakistan approved another five-year plan, costing $798.7 million, to eliminate polio from the country. The country has previously spent $1 billion on polio eradication efforts but it has been largely unsuccessful.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only remaining in the world with circulating wild poliovirus, with unvaccinated children under living under the threat of life-long paralysis or fatality.
While the country has made substantial progress, courtesy of the polio workers’ efforts to vaccinate children, many deep-rooted problems and security concerns remain, thus hindering the eradication of the crippling disease from the country.
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