EDITORIAL: At a special signing ceremony during the recently held Riyadh International Humanitarian Forum, Saudi Arabia pledged to provide funds worth $ 500 million to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).
Present on the occasion among others distinguished attendees were Director General of the World Health Organisation Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, Dr Sania Nishtar.
Due to decades of GPEI partners’ efforts and international donors’ generous support polio has been all but eliminated except in Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan and one or two cases surfacing in the war devastated Gaza and Yemen. This worries people everywhere since polio is a highly contagious debilitating disease, afflicting children.
Pakistan can easily identify with WHO chief’s assertion that “we have come so far in our shared mission to consign polio to history, but the last mile is the hardest.” Just as our Polio Eradication Programme seems to be almost there, it stumbles before the finishing line.
Last year, Pakistan saw polio resurgence with 74 reported cases: 27 of them from Balochistan; 23 from Sindh; 22 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP); and one each from Punjab and the federal capital Islamabad. It is not even the end February of this year and three polio cases have already occurred, two in Sindh and one in KP.
The poliovirus keeps causing disease despite regular vaccination campaigns. This year’s first nationwide vaccination drive was carried out from February 3 to 9, and later in the month followed up with another round in 104 union councils bordering Afghanistan as well as the ones having Afghan refugee camps.
But the results, again, may not be very encouraging since this fight is not only against poliovirus but also against disinformation spread by extremist elements about the vaccination, claiming it to be a Western ploy to control Muslim population by sterilizing children. These misguided people have no qualms about killing other Muslims, though.
More than a hundred health workers and their police escorts have been gunned down. During the current campaign, a policeman assigned to guard a vaccination team was brutally shot dead on Feb 19 by unidentified gunmen in Bajaur district of KP.
It is imperative therefore to address people’s distrust of polio vaccination. Awareness campaigns launched by the government from time to time are important but of a limited effect. More important is the need to engage with people at local level so as to disabuse them of disinformation.
Towards that end, the government should change its top-down approach, and seek the support of communities at the local level through clerics and/or other influential individuals. They can best ensure every child in their respective areas is vaccinated and shielded from the crippling polio disease.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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