KARACHI: As risks associated with polio immunisation increase, so does challenges for police and administration who say they have made ‘foolproof’ arrangements to give security to thousands of unarmed vaccinators during polio drives despite the fact their resources and manpower are stretched to the limit.

Karachi South administration organised an interactive workshop on the challenges in immunisation of children in association with the Karachi Union of Journalists at a local hotel in which senior administrative and police officials spoke on problems confronted by them during polio campaigns.

Nasir Aftab, senior superintendent of police, said that protecting polio workers was an entirely new challenge for police in addition to loads of responsibilities they were overburdened with.

“Our basic duty was to catch a criminal, then we had to protect mosques and imambargahs and go after terrorists and now we have been given the responsibility to protect our unarmed warriors against the deadly disease,” said Mr Aftab.

Despite an increase in police’s charter of duties, their limited resources and manpower, they were committed to providing security to vaccinators who were more than 6,000 in Karachi and over 22,000 in the province, he said, adding that impoverished areas with low literacy rate posed more threats and put up more resistance.

The SSP said that since police had been given the security assignment, incidents of violence against vaccinators had considerably dropped. “We are using maximum resources to improve our coordination with the officials running the campaign and so far the results are very positive,” he said.

Karachi South Deputy Commissioner Mustafa Jamal Qazi complained that he received a ‘lukewarm’ response from the health department in making the immunisation campaign a success.

“The deputy commissioners and the rest of our officials are risking their lives to make the anti-polio campaign a success, yet we have a lot of problems with the health department, which is not responding with equal zeal,” said Mr Qazi.

He said the campaign in Lyari was ‘excellent’ as the area population was positively sensitised about the issue but the health department was not appointing a town health officer for Saddar Town.

He described polio workers as the ‘unsung heroes’, saying the campaign was improving because of their sacrifices. “Many vaccinators have died during the campaign. They are sincere with their cause despite the fact that they get paltry stipends and that too after many months,” he said.

He said the strict administrative measures would not resolve the issue but it was persuasion and participation through which people could be persuaded to get their children immunised.

Earlier, Dr Iqbal Memon, chief of the Pakistan Paediatrics Association (PPA), said that even if Pakistan introduced new vaccines they could not improve the nation’s health if they were not properly utilised. There were negligible cases of measles till 2007 but now even small clinics in Karachi were reporting several cases daily, he said.

He said that immunisation coverage was pathetically low in Pakistan, which should be improved as vaccination saved three million lives all over the world every year.

He said that 70 per cent of the children brought to hospitals for measles had not been vaccinated. Each year, 435,000 children under five years of age died in the country out of which 100,000 died of pneumonia and 80,000 due to diarrhoea, he said.

“Immunisation is a cost-effective health intervention as investing in vaccines saves more money than its cost. Vaccines are weapons of mass protection,” said Dr Memon.

Dr Durre Naz Jamal of the expanded programme on immunisation in Sindh said the measles cases in the province in four months this year were 2,809, which were more than the figures of the entire last year, which were 2,709.

She claimed the immunisation coverage had improved ‘satisfactorily’, but added in the same breath 115 children had died of measles this year in Sindh while the number of deaths from the disease last year stood at 210. Two more vaccines against rotavirus and hepatitis-B would be introduced this year, she said.

Mohammad Aamir of the Sindh Chief Minister’s Polio Cell said the polio samples in Karachi’s environment were negative and polio deaths in the province were four last year, much fewer than 33 in 2011.

Afzal Zaidi, polio focal person in Karachi South, said the security-wise high-risk areas were also polio high-risk areas, which were mostly economically backward.

He said there were 200 apartment buildings where polio workers were not being allowed to enter a year back but after persuasion by authorities people living in each building were now cooperating with the immunisation campaigners.