Polio crisis-point

Polio has tightened its grip on Pakistan, and this deadly embrace now threatens not only our own population but the populations of every other state to which Pakistani people travel. Karachi is reportedly on the brink of “an explosive polio outbreak” according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) with two deaths in the last week and 73 cases reported across the country so far this year. Our death toll last year was 52 and we are now at the point where Pakistan presents a significant risk in terms of polio transmission to the rest of the world. Alarm bells have already rung in Syria and Egypt where cases of polio infection have been tracked back to their origins in Pakistan, and the WHO is looking ever more closely at a travel ban on all people from Pakistan who have not been vaccinated against the virus.

As recently as five years ago, Pakistan was very close to being polio-free, but a number of events have produced a cultural climate in which there is powerful resistance to the polio immunisation programme. Polio vaccinators have been threatened and several have been murdered, as have the police deputed to protect them. Parents have been refusing to have their children vaccinated, 47,099 of them according to government figures, and another 2,340,567 have been missed principally because of problems of access caused by conflict or threats to polio teams. A WHO travel ban could have truly catastrophic results, but it is now a distinct possibility. There is a window of opportunity between December and April when the chances of infection are at their lowest. The government needs to place the polio eradication campaign at the top of its agenda and divert the human and material resources necessary to support it. Every available media platform must be used to persuade the people to get their children vaccinated and the vaccinators accorded the very highest security. Once again, defeat is being snatched from the jaws of victory.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 7^th, 2013.

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