Pay the vaccinators

It is entirely possible that Pakistan is going to find itself quarantined from the rest of the world in coming weeks.

If ever there were a group of people that deserved a national monument to their courage and commitment to the well-being of the nation, it is the polio vaccinators and the doctors who struggle to administer the vaccination programme. Month after month, they go out into the field in areas that they know are high-risk, to put drops in the mouths of children in order to prevent them getting a crippling disease. Month after month, some of them, or their administrative teams, or the police deputed to protect them, are killed. They are killed by those who wish to keep Pakistan in the Dark Ages, ravaged by disease, ostracised by the rest of the world and prey to bizarre conspiracy theories that are long discredited. It is entirely possible that Pakistan is going to find itself quarantined from the rest of the world in the coming weeks, as the World Health Organisation (WHO) decides what to do with the country that is the single largest proliferator of the polio virus globally.

At the very least, it would be appropriate to pay these brave men and women in a timely manner, but true to bad form, anti-polio workers in Balochistan have not been paid for four months. Balochistan is something of a success story in terms of polio prevention and has been polio free for 14 months, a goal only achieved by maintaining the programme of prevention. Just because there has been no case for 14 months does not mean that the danger has passed; the campaign has to continue. There are 914 teams of vaccinators in Balochistan, and half their Rs500 a day salary is paid by the WHO, the other half by the provincial health department. There have been four campaigns recently run by the WHO and the government and it is time to pay those who risk all to produce the positive result that they have. As to why they have not been paid, there is the usual fog of mystery and the complaints of the unpaid workers appear to fall on deaf ears.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 17^th, 2014.

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