A miserable record

It is for K-P administration to concentrate its energies on polio rather than street-corner politics in Islamabad

That the number of polio cases in 2014 was going to exceed 200 had been obvious for several weeks. The explosion of cases is directly linked to the dispersal of internally displaced persons (IDP) as a result of Operation Zarb-e-Azb and the high level of refusals for the oral vaccine, primarily among families that are ethnic Pashtuns.

There are a number of other factors, such as the continued harassment of polio vaccinators and the failure of both the cold chain and the vaccine itself on occasion. Taken together, Pakistan now stands on the brink of international isolation externally, and internally, the spread of a disease that India managed to eradicate in 2011. Health officials on October 3 confirmed eight polio cases, taking the tally for the year to 202, exceeding by two the previous worst year of 2000. The majority of cases — six — were from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and Fata, the other two from Karachi and Quetta, respectively. The case in Quetta is notable because the family did not refuse the vaccine and the child had had seven previous doses of it — which may point to cold-chain and quality control problems.

To be fair to the civil administration in K-P and Fata, there has been little or no vaccination in parts of both because of the appalling security situation, and it would have been little short of a suicide mission were vaccinators sent in at any time since 2012. Thus, there is a pool of unvaccinated and highly mobile children living in conditions that are conducive to the spread of the virus. Although many thousands of children within the IDP population have been vaccinated, there is an almost equal number that have not, and they present a significant risk to the wider population.

There have been calls at the federal level for the administration of Fata and the government of K-P to make their vaccination campaigns “as effective as possible”, which is a statement of the painfully obvious if nothing else.

The buck really does stop at the provincial level, at least when it comes to K-P, and it is for the provincial administration now to concentrate its energies on polio eradication rather than refining the art of street-corner politics in Islamabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 5^th, 2014.

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