PESHAWAR, May 19: More and more people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are refusing to get their children vaccinated against polio with the provincial health secretariat officials blaming it on lack of coordination between the government and the Unicef, the main financer of advocacy and social mobilisation for immunisation.

“The April immunisation campaign shows that the number of the OPV (oral polio vaccine) refusal cases has increased from 19,353 in March to 19,358. In the January campaign, the number was 18,403,” an official told Dawn on Saturday.

He further said in January 2011, the province had reported 12,583 such cases.

Officials said flawed communication strategies on the part of the Unicef had hampered the government’s efforts to mobilise public opinion for immunisation by doing away with misconceptions against OPV and thus, increasing the immunisation refusal incidence in the province.

They said one of the Unicef’s international commitments was to create demand for OPV in Pakistan, one of the three polio endemic countries in the world.

“We have hired the services of 1,450 technicians, 18,000 lady health workers and around 5,000 teachers for vaccination of five million children in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but OPV refusal cases and lack of access to children to be immunised are the main barrier to the province becoming polio-free,” an official said.

He said the province had fully adopted the Augmented Emergency Polio Eradication Plan, 2012, and had formed health committees at the union council level to convince people for vaccination of their children to protect them against the crippling disease.“The Unicef has created parallel structures at provincial, district and union council levels instead of coordinating its efforts with the government,” he said.

The official said the Unicef was  supposed to complete the hiring of 1,450 polio officers before January 2102 but had failed to do so even five months after the passage of the stipulated time.

He said there was lack of coordination between Unicef and the government in the province resulting in high immunisation refusal incidence.

The official also said the Unicef had no accountability mechanism, while the health department held all its anti-polio workers accountable for poor performance.

Under the Augmented Emergency Polio Eradication Plan implemented in January 2012, the district coordination officers are supervising immunisation campaigns in their respective districts.

“We initiated action against 150 health workers over poor performance in the April immunisation drive. We suspended payment of salary to them, terminated their services or sought explanation from them,” the official said.

According to him, the problem of people saying no to immunisation of their children in the province is becoming chronic due to flawed strategies.

“The Unicef is trying to address immunisation refusals and has been hiring staff to woo people to vaccinate their children but there is a lack of coordination between it and the government health agencies. It is a team work and the UN agency will have to go for coordinated efforts,” the official said.Recently, the Unicef recruited around 55 district health support communication officers, union council communication officers and social mobilisers to work with communities for polio eradication and addressing immunisation refusal cases.

“But their performance hasn’t showed any improvement in the situation,” the official said.

Of this year’s 16 cases, seven were reported in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, four in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, two each in Sindh and Balochistan, and one in Punjab.

In 2011, of the total 21 cases parents of six affected children had refused vaccination in KP while 10 kids had received less than seven drops of the OPV, they said.

When contacted, the spokesperson for the Unicef and the relevant government department declined to comment on the issue.