Pakistan is one of the last two countries in the world where polio is endemic. Last year it saw the highest number of new polio cases in 17 years, at 306. Ayesha Raza Farooq, the senator leading the government's polio eradication efforts, said the situation had improved dramatically this year, with fewer than 40 cases so far.
Here, Farooq talks to dpa about the ongoing polio campaign, in an interview edited for brevity and clarity:
Q: How is the polio programme going this year?
A: The polio programme in Pakistan has had a major turnaround this year with a lot of new interventions and some strategic changes. We have managed to reduce the number of polio cases by 85 per cent compared to the same point last year.
The biggest challenge is to ensure that we continue to have access in areas [that were] previously hard to reach.
Q: What has changed in these areas?
A: The security and law and order situation has changed tremendously, with the launch of the Zarb-e-Azb operation [a military operation against Taliban and other militants] by the Pakistani military last year. We have, with the help of the army and other law enforcement agencies, been able to access the Waziristan belt, which was very hard to reach previously.
Q: What other factors have helped the campaign this year?
A: The programme made a paradigm shift nine months back, as we focussed away from how many children we covered to how many we missed, which is a small percentage but we felt we were persistently missing the same children. Following that we embarked upon systematic and real-time monitoring of all our campaigns ... to ensure that any children that are not found at home, that are missed, are tracked and vaccinated during the campaign or later in the catch-up days.
We have reduced the number of missing children from half a million in 2014 to 35,000 children this year.
Q: What effect did the attacks on polio workers have?
A: The polio programme was doing very well until 2011. The consistent attacks on our polio workers that began after December 2012 led to a massive rise in polio cases in 2013 and 2014. So of course it affected our programme very adversely.
We also saw, in 2012, a ban being imposed on polio and other vaccinations in the Waziristan belt, which till last year accounted for more than 80 per cent of total polio cases.
Q: What was the trigger for the ban imposed by the militants in 2012?
A: It was due to the Shakeel Afridi episode [the physician who helped the CIA in a fake vaccination campaign to help identify Osama bin Laden], where unfortunately a health initiative campaign was used for other motives. That is what led the extremist elements in the country to become suspicious of this door-to-door drive.
In some hard-to-reach areas we also saw misconceptions revolving around the vaccine itself, saying it contained elements that are not halal [prepared according to Islamic practices] and would lead to sterility.
Q: Who is financing the programme?
A: More than 80 per cent of the programme over the last three-year period - which ends in December 2015 - was borne by the government, with a loan from the Islamic Development Bank.
Q: You are backing a bill calling for mandatory immunisation - why?
A: When parents don't vaccinate their children it not only affects the individual child's health but it puts the entire community at risk ... It's the state's responsibility to protect the right to life. When we talk about right to life, we are talking about a healthy life, not a crippled life.
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