Anti-polio drive: Report proposes pre-travel vaccination for Pakistan

Independent Monitoring Board declares K-P a ‘safe sanctuary’ for polio.

PESHAWAR:

Having failed to eradicate polio from the country, the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) has recommended imposing ‘pre-travel’ vaccination checks on Pakistan and lists Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) as a ‘safe sanctuary’ for polio.

Issued last month, the IMB report stated that K-P has experienced a surge in polio in the second half of 2012 and accounts for nearly 40% of all of Pakistan polio cases and 46% of the infected towns and districts this year.

“Inconsistent performance at the union council level, poor implementation of the migrant strategy and a failure to conduct additional vaccination passages in the low transmission season contributed to the upsurge,” it observed.

Furthermore, the IMB report recommended that “the International Health Regulations Experts Review Committee urgently issue a standing recommendation by May 2013 that will introduce pre-travel vaccination checks in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan until national transmission is stopped.”

The report maintained that no country should allow its citizens, from any endemic polio state, to cross their border without a valid vaccination certificate.

Conditions in FATA

The IMB expressed serious concerns over children in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) missing vaccination drives. It said that the “lives of 203,000 children have been put in danger by the actions of anti-government groups that have banned polio vaccinators in South and North Waziristan.”

Analysis shows, that in Fata, parents are 40% more likely to refuse Oral Polio Vaccines (OPVs) than parents in any other part of the country.

However, the report conceded that the number of inaccessible children in Bara Tehsil of Khyber Agency has decreased in recent months from over 46,000 in January to less than 18,000 in September, 2012.

Reactions

Commenting over the travel restrictions on Pakistan, Senior Coordinator for Polio Eradication at the World Health Organisation (WHO) Dr Elias Durry told The Express Tribune that the IMB report reflects global concerns over Pakistan and other polio endemic countries.

“It is understandable that every polio-free country would like to maintain its status and may consider taking steps to avoid importation of the virus,” Durry says.

Dr Imtaiz Ali Shah, the Technical Focal Person on Polio Eradication at K-P’s Chief Minster House, said the IMB report was discussed with Chief Secretary Ghulam Dastagir who expressed his reservations over it.

“The upsurge in the province was recorded due to the global shortage of polio vaccine and the province was not represented correctly in the data set provided by donor organisations,” Shah said.

He added the provincial government had sanctioned Rs470 million for the year 2013, to develop the anti-polio programme, initiate door-to-door vaccination programs and appoint 200 EPI technicians in this regard. He said that the provincial government would end polio campaigns in the first five months of next year and strengthen union council level polio eradication committees.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th, 2012.