A running battle
Unless and until the government writ runs across the whole of Fata, polio eradication is a virtual impossibility.
So long as it is not possible to access the entire population that is at risk, there is always going to be a pool of unregulated and highly mobile people with the capacity both to harbour the virus and spread it. PHOTO: EXPRESS
Two reports in this newspaper on May 27 illuminate starkly the difficulties faced by those trying to eradicate polio in Pakistan. One report speaks of yet another campaign to vaccinate children in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), saying that 621,681 children are to be immunised. The other report says that 370,000 children in Fata will be missed in the new campaign because of security concerns and the pervasive belief that the polio vaccine is somehow linked to a campaign to limit fertility.
The issue was complicated further by the fake polio campaign that the CIA used as a weapon in its hunt for Osama bin Laden. Furthermore, according to the World Health Organization, traces of the polio virus found in the sewers of Israel, Palestine and Syria were reported to have orginated in Pakistan. As a result, Pakistani citizens will be, as of June 1, required to provide proof of polio vaccination when travelling to other countries. Those working at the grassroots in the polio drives are desperately vulnerable. The toll of vaccinators and those who protect them has risen to 56 since December 2012. There are 2,235 teams of vaccinators in the new campaign, typically women who are paid a pittance when they are paid at all — itself a matter of disgrace to those managing the efforts. It is reported that there are ‘elaborate security arrangements’ in place to protect them, with the army to the forefront. This is certainly a more settling development.
Children in three out of four target areas are not going to be getting the drops, and therein lay the seeds of failure. So long as it is not possible to access the entire population that is at risk, there is always going to be a pool of unregulated and highly mobile people with the capacity both to harbour the virus and spread it. The majority of the 67 cases of polio reported in the country thus far this year have their origins in Fata — though several have also been reported from Karachi. Unless and until the government writ runs across the whole of Fata, polio eradication is a virtual impossibility — the grimmest of grim realities.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 28th, 2014.
The issue was complicated further by the fake polio campaign that the CIA used as a weapon in its hunt for Osama bin Laden. Furthermore, according to the World Health Organization, traces of the polio virus found in the sewers of Israel, Palestine and Syria were reported to have orginated in Pakistan. As a result, Pakistani citizens will be, as of June 1, required to provide proof of polio vaccination when travelling to other countries. Those working at the grassroots in the polio drives are desperately vulnerable. The toll of vaccinators and those who protect them has risen to 56 since December 2012. There are 2,235 teams of vaccinators in the new campaign, typically women who are paid a pittance when they are paid at all — itself a matter of disgrace to those managing the efforts. It is reported that there are ‘elaborate security arrangements’ in place to protect them, with the army to the forefront. This is certainly a more settling development.
Children in three out of four target areas are not going to be getting the drops, and therein lay the seeds of failure. So long as it is not possible to access the entire population that is at risk, there is always going to be a pool of unregulated and highly mobile people with the capacity both to harbour the virus and spread it. The majority of the 67 cases of polio reported in the country thus far this year have their origins in Fata — though several have also been reported from Karachi. Unless and until the government writ runs across the whole of Fata, polio eradication is a virtual impossibility — the grimmest of grim realities.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 28th, 2014.