Polio Vs Drones

As Pakistanis we are angry at being duped and are suspicious of the work foreign NGOs do here.

While hundreds of people are protesting drone strikes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a bigger concern remains largely ignored. Polio continues to claim the precious lives of our children, if not crippling them for life. But we are at a loss to deal with this. There is no strategy in place and the PM's Polio Monitoring cell remains dormant.

Polio can be avoided if the government had some sort of direction. As in the case with other issues where terrorism is concerned, we have pushed ourselves into a corner, waiting for the other side to make most of the situation. No one comes out and protests polio related deaths.

In 2013, even before the start of December, we have had 68 confirmed cases of polio, one of the highest in the world. Two cases remain to be confirmed. This exceeds last year’s reported number of 58. Most of these cases are reported from FATA, followed by Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh. FATA has so far reported 48 cases. Only some years back, we were winning the war against polio. Now we have started to lose once again.

This is just one side of the tragedy. The other is the story of the brave people who have tried to fight polio. Since July 2012, about thirty people associated with the anti-polio drive have been killed in Pakistan. Many more have been injured.

This week saw the death of Zakir Khan, a policeman who had joined the force only a year back, and was shot dead in Peshawar ostensibly for being part of a polio team escort duty. His colleague was seriously injured.

Once again a message has been given to not only workers who administer the polio drops but also to those who protect these workers. Despite the attacks, almost all in broad daylight, not one person has been arrested so far, which in turn has further emboldened those who commit such crimes.

The heroes of the anti-polio campaign remain unsung. These young men and women put their lives in danger by going out in the streets to deliver anti-polio drops to children from different backgrounds and localities. The danger to their lives is not restricted to FATA or KP where most of the attacks have taken place. Workers in Karachi have also been targeted. These workers are paid very little and the security they are offered is itself under threat as we saw again this week.

The polio campaign now seems to have been hijacked by international politics. There is anger in different parts of Pakistan because foreign aid agencies were used for hunting down the family of Osama Bin Ladin. What is interesting is that campaign did not involve polio workers given that DNA cannot be collected by drops administered orally. But the polio campaign has suffered the most as a consequence.

Taliban commanders last year announced a ban on polio vaccines as long as the drone strikes remain. This is an interesting position. While many others have termed polio vaccines anti-Muslim, by linking the same to the drone strikes, what we can understand is that the Taliban have said that while they are not opposed to the anti-polio campaign in principle, they are using it as leverage against the US administration in a bid to end drone strikes. Only time will tell whether we understood right.

Then there is the politics of the NGOs. If press reports and government leaks are to be believed, some well known and prestigious NGOs helped doctors like Shakil Afridi in his vaccination campaign to hunt the Bin Ladin family. As Pakistanis we are angry at being duped. More important now we see all foreign NGOs in the same light and are suspicious of their work here. Already the PML-N government is now looking at ways to monitor donor funding and put restrictions on this. This may prove counter-productive however. And polio is our problem. Not that of any NGO. When will we own up to it?

Now we are told that polio has travelled from Pakistan to as far as Syria via Egypt and Israel. Half a million children are not vaccinated in Syria and are at risk. Pakistanis travelling abroad will be subject to restrictions on account of polio. We continue to be our own worst enemies.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2013.

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