Five new wild poliovirus type-1 cases were detected in the Federally Administered Tribal Area on Thursday, raising the total polio count to 127 this year, the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Islamabad confirmed.
According to the NIH, the first polio victim from Thursday’s cases is Hamza, aged 18 months and a resident of Argali Nadi village in Bara tehsil, Khyber Agency. The second child, aged 19 months, is Ibrahim, a resident of Gora Adhera village, Jamrud tehsil in Khyber Agency. The third victim is Bilal, aged 13 months, a resident of Khajoori Mir Khel Adda village in Bara tehsil, Khyber agency.
The fourth case is Khizar Hayat, aged 1 year, a resident of Kalang village, also in Bara tehsil. The last reported case is Adia, aged 2 years and 9 months, a resident of Kalutai village in Birmal tehsil, South Waziristan Agency. This year, 94 cases have been reported from Fata, 20 from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 11 from Sindh and one each from Balochistan and Punjab.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 5th, 2014.
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Where is the president, the prime minister, and the government? We are crippling an entire generation, and these are fighting to outmaneuver their political opponents.
In a true democracy the head of the state would have resigned for such a happening.
The continuing prevalence of Polio in Pakistan is the inevitable outcome of Pakistan’s obsession for boxing above her weight class and nurturing an outsize military in order to seek parity with India leaving limited resources for carrying out a sustained and widespread polio vaccination programme which is near 100% effective.
Till such time as Pakistan accepts the immutable reality that she is inferior to India and throttles back on parity seeking military expenditure, Pakistan’s civilians will continue to suffer from the scourge of easily preventable diseases like Polio which requires nothing more than the administration of a vaccine to prevent.
Seeking parity with India by gorging on shiny new eye candy weapon systems, maintaining the Generals, Marshalls and Admirals of the Military in the princely Mughal style they are used to and strutting the world stage as the “Sole Islamic Nuclear Power” and “Citadel of Islam”, will as former Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto put it require Pakistan “Eating Grass”.
The solution is thus rather straight forward. Pakistan needs to accept the reality that she is India’s inferior.
The big question that then remains is will Pakistan make the rational choice and junk the braggadocio of attempting to seek equality with India? Or will it accept the inevitable consequence of misallocation of resources entailing children of Pakistan’s civilians figuratively “Eating Grass” and suffering the scourge of a disease that can be eradicated with a simple vaccine?
The inability of Pakistan to vaccinate children against polio making Pakistan one of the last countries in the world to eradicate this vaccine preventable disease, has the potential of adversely effecting India through spread of the disease across the border into India. So in order to prevent the polio virus joining the list of other unwelcome exports from Pakistan into India; namely Islamic terrorists, firearms, ammunition, explosives, narcotics and counterfeit Indian currency notes, it would be more prudent for India to just stop providing visa’s to Pakistanis to visit India and simultaneously prohibit Indian’s from visiting Pakistan.
India should not permit herself to be swayed by sympathy inducing Pakistani arguments about the need for maintaining people to people contact, helping divided families and using visit visas as confidence building measure to foster peace. India must instead be free to enjoy the fruits of eschewing the temptation of acquiring lots of nuclear “bums” and weapon systems in order to make resources available for polio eradication unlike Pakistan.