Efforts to immunise 350,000 children against polio in Swat Valley have been put on hold due to ongoing violence in the area. "Yes, it's confirmed. It's postponed," Dr Javed Iqbal, national polio campaign co-ordinator for the World Health Organisation (WHO), was quoted as saying by IRIN, the UN information unit in Islamabad.
He said that some of these children, many of whom had left the area with their families due to fighting, might still be vaccinated if they could be reached. The 3-day drive against polio began from Tuesday October 30.
"That's why we are providing additional vaccine resources to certain districts where some people are moving to," Iqbal said, stressing the organisation's desire to immunise as many children as possible in this week's nation-wide campaign targeting 33.6 million children younger than five.
"This is a huge logistical undertaking, demonstrating the efforts involved in reaching every child every time, to protect them against polio," said Melissa Corkum, a spokeswoman for UNICEF's polio eradication programme in Islamabad.
"It's important that all children, including the very young and sick, are taken to a fixed vaccination site to receive the OPV during the national immunisation campaigns," Corkum said.
But due to security concerns, not every area is accessible to polio teams and field monitors. "For these reasons, some areas remain inaccessible; the communities do not refuse immunisation, but security concerns do not allow teams to enter the area. Under such circumstances all children cannot be reached with life-saving immunisation," the Unicef official conceded.
According to WHO, the world's success in eradicating polio, a debilitating disease mainly striking children, depends on four countries where the virus remains endemic - India, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In 2007 alone, Pakistan has seen 16 cases from across the country, including eight in Pakistan's south-eastern Sindh province, five in NWFP, two in Balochistan and one in the country's populous Punjab province. Commenting on this week's polio campaign - the last nation-wide campaign of the year - Corkum said the campaign would continue in Swat once the security situation on the ground improved.