The measles battle

Pakistan has a chronic shortage of good — or even barely adequate — public health provisions. Even in places where public health is of passing quality, the capital Islamabad for instance, it can take very little to disrupt its delivery. The anti-measles vaccination programme in Islamabad has to say the very least a chequered history, and is far behind schedule for a range of reasons associated with underfunding and poor management. This year the funds arrived and the campaign was due to kick off when it ran straight into the buffers of a deteriorating security situation linked to the ongoing protests there.

The drive lasts 12 days and the teams delivering the vaccines need mobility and security. A range of vaccine-preventable illnesses in children are resurgent — measles and polio being the headline examples — and their rise is directly linked to high volumes of displaced persons as in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and highly variable local security deficits that have seen an attack on a polio team this week that left a policeman dead. Un-immunised children are themselves a threat to other children, and can carry a disease without themselves displaying symptoms. The successive failure of the measles campaigns in the national capital is going to degrade whatever there was of herd immunity and open the door for the measles virus to run riot. The 20 schools earmarked as bases for the campaign are currently occupied by the police and army providing security to the centre of the capital. The effects of the ongoing demonstrations are reaching into every corner of the country. The national and provincial governments are transfixed like rabbits in the headlights of the oncoming car that eventually runs them over. Islamabad needs its children to be vaccinated against measles if this and future generations are to be protected from this preventable disease. The longer the demonstrations continue, the more they erode the health of our children, both today and tomorrow.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2014.

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