A bold strategy: Govt considers linking health facilities with polio vaccination

Peshawar district administration says children with zero doses could also be denied passports, CNICs

PESHAWAR:

In what could prove to be a decisive move to eliminate polio, the Peshawar district administration is considering making the provision of state health facilities conditional with vaccination against the crippling disease.

The administration took the matter into consideration during a meeting in the city on Sunday.

If implemented, the aim is to ensure parents allow polio teams to administer the vaccine to their children, Peshawar Deputy Commissioner Zaheerul Islam told The Express Tribune. He added besides health benefits at government hospitals, the administration was considering making other facilities conditional with vaccination.



He said people in remote areas had refused drops in the recent past, adding a future strategy could involve denying domicile, passports and computerised national identity cards to those children whose parents refused to let them take the vaccine.

Health officials said strategies to ensure every single child is administered polio vaccine was discussed at length at the meeting. They said making health and other facilities conditional was a move which could see positive changes.

“Teams will keep a record of those parents who refuse polio drops for their children and they will not be provided health facilities at government hospitals,” said an official from the health department. He corroborated the DC’s statement, saying children with zero vaccine doses would not be issued passports, domiciles and national identity cards under this recommendation.

The official, requesting anonymity, said the health department was making every effort to root out the poliovirus from the province. He believed the latest recommendation would prove fruitful.

Meanwhile, the health department was left with no choice but to replace 18 polio vaccination teams who feared for their safety during a day-long polio campaign in Sarband and Haryana on Sunday. The deputy commissioner made it clear those areas left out would be covered in a follow-up campaign. “We must administer polio drops to the children at all costs,” he asserted

Some 4,260 vaccination teams were constituted across the district to administer drops to over 0.7 million children. For their security, over 7,000 police personnel were deployed and Section 144 was also imposed apart from a ban on motorcycle riding.

With six new polio cases reported on Saturday, the number of children having contracted the virus in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas has reached 169 in 2014. The figure for K-P, meanwhile, has jumped to 60. In Balochistan, the number of reported cases stands at 17. Of the 27 polio cases in Sindh, most of them were from Karachi, while three patients from Punjab were reported to have the crippling disease.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2014.