Time to set our priorities right

JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: As world attention is diverted towards the Ebola epidemic that is threatening most West African countries, Pakistan is still struggling to contain a far more dangerous disease: polio. Newspapers’ shrieking headlines in the last few days are being met with little concern in Pakistan. The anti-polio campaign in Karachi has been postponed due to security threats, attack on a polio vaccination team has left three injured in Gujranwala, a polio team was fired upon in Rahim Yar Khan, a three-day anti-polio drive was deferred in Quetta and Pishin, Islamabad was excluded from the anti-polio campaign due to the ongoing political unrest there, and a fearful upsurge in polio cases has been reported from Karachi, Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Fata and other pockets across the country.

Do all these news headlines cause any sort of concern anywhere? Perhaps not, otherwise an emergency would have been declared to contain this epidemic. But we seem to have far more important tasks to do — staging miles-long protest rallies, holding impressive public meetings and routine sit-ins to disrupt the government’s functioning. Sadly, Pakistan has become the country with the largest number of reported polio cases. Perhaps, the lack of seriousness on the part of the federal and provincial governments and politicians is a far greater epidemic than the disease itself.

Mind you, tomorrow all these handicapped angels will ask their parents, relatives and authorities, why they were not protected. What answer will we give them then? It is time to wake up.

Masood Khan

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2014.

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