Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries that still have the polio virus.
Pakistan in spite of multimillion-dollar campaigns featuring well known personalities and run on all media is still now facing a resurgence of the disease and now that due to new policies of some donors aid for polio eradication campaigns might not be so freely available it will become an even more uphill task to somehow stop the spread of this disease and indeed to eradicate it altogether.
This is a really strange situation where all resources are being employed towards a simple task of dropping two drops of a medicine down the throat of a child but there are elements in our society who are so opposed to this act that they are willing to kill and even die for in order to stop this from happening.
What are their motivations is something I have wondered about over the years and if there are apprehensions why they have not been addressed openly. All we hear is that polio workers were attacked and in most cases it is the guards protecting them that pay the price with their life.
Yes there are awareness campaigns highlighting the tragic consequences for young people who do not get these polio drops but no detailed discussions with their parents or in the case of tribal people village elders.
Do the uneducated masses realize that polio was once a global phenomenon and it was through the administration of these drops that it has been eradicated around the world except Pakistan and Afghanistan where it is somehow regarded with suspicion. Let us have a look at the history of polio.
Polio was first discovered in 1773 and was called poliomyelitis it struck Sir Walter Scott who was diagnosed with “A severe teething fever which deprived him of the power of his right leg” It was later also known as Heine-Medin disease due to the contributions of physicians Jakob Heine and Karl Oskar Medin in 1840.
It was in April 12, 1955 that Dr. Jonas Salk developed a vaccine against this frightening disease. The federal government in the USA immediately implemented a plan to have the vaccine produced by six licensed pharmaceutical companies and distributed to children throughout the country.
As you can see the free distribution and administering to children constitute a routine practice, which is in force from as long as 1955 and not something cooked up by conspirators to harm the God-loving children of devout Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
There are even examples of celebrities that had polio but survived and made their name in their profession such as Mia Farrow, an American actress, Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also known as FDR, who was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945.
He is the longest-serving US president, and the only one to have served more than two terms; he was also the first president with a significant physical disability. FDR was diagnosed with infantile paralysis, better known as polio, in 1921, at the age of 39. Also in list of famous people who had polio is Francis Ford Coppola, an American filmmaker.
He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood and one of the greatest directors of all time. I think there should be a rethinking on the polio campaign and many facts that have not been brought to light should be placed before those who oppose these campaigns putting our young children in danger.
Right now the global position of polio is that of the 3 strains of wild poliovirus (type 1, type 2 and type 3), wild poliovirus type 2 was eradicated in 1999 and wild poliovirus type 3 was eradicated in 2020.
As at 2022, endemic wild poliovirus type 1 remains in the two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. Alarm bells are ringing as new cases are reported.
New and greater efforts are required to halt the advance of polio and the most important is to provide information to those who for some reason oppose polio drops campaigns and expose the children of Pakistan to the tragic possibility of this disabling disease.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
The writer is a well-known columnist
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