Stroke of genius: District Central comes up with plan to counter vaccine refusals

Refusal to let the health workers administer vaccines could result in registration of private schools being cancelled

KARACHI:

One of the biggest problems faced by health workers trying to eradicate the menace of polio in Pakistan is the refusal of parents to let their children be administered the vaccine.

Karachi’s District Central administration has, however, come up with an ingenious plan to counter this problem. They have written letters to around 1,400 private schools in their jurisdiction, warning that refusal to let the health workers administer the vaccines, could result in their registration being cancelled.

In the recent campaign in the district that ran between January 23 and Januray 26, around 50,000 school-going children were immunised in this manner. A report issued by the district administration says there are around 1,400 private schools in the district — a majority of which refused polio workers to enter their premises. Almost 36 per cent of them were successfully covered under the plan.

“Around 80 per cent of the private schools were not cooperating with polio teams,” said deputy commissioner Dr Saifur Rehman.

The schools had refused the health workers on the grounds that the parents had asked them to do so. The parents, on the other hand, had been advised by doctors and private hospitals against vaccinating their children with the polio drops provided by the government. The district administration went one step further — they sent letters to the private hospitals and the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, warning to cancel their registration if they did not cooperate with the health workers.

“We had to adopt an aggressive policy this time,” Dr Rehman told The Express Tribune. “And it really works.” He said that if a team visits a school and finds all the children under one roof, it saves them a whole lot of time, cost of supervision and there was no need for security too.

In fact, the plan has worked so well that it has attracted the attention of the top health officials as well as the World Health Organisation, who now believe it should be implemented across the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 30^th, 2015.