IT began as a narrative in pockets of resistance that many thought should not prove that difficult to counter, but it has turned into a sustained and violent campaign. Over the months, we have seen the anti-polio drive losing ground with startling rapidity, particularly in the northwest. Entire communities have refused to let the polio vaccination be administered to their children, and polio workers have been attacked and killed. Meanwhile, reports of children having contracted the crippling virus continue to surface with distressing frequency. Consider the fact that on Thursday, members of a polio vaccination team were manhandled and driven out of the Merozai area in Kohat. The workers were there as a result of the constitution of a special polio vaccination campaign that was launched in Kohat after a three-year-old child was found infected with the virus two weeks ago. Resistance to the vaccination is in fact on the rise in Kohat division, even though it is amongst the areas where populations are at relatively greater risk given their proximity to Afghanistan — which, along with Pakistan, is one of only three polio-endemic countries left in the world — and cross-border movement.

It is a troubling situation with no easy solutions. The state needs to provide greater security to polio teams, although there have been instances where even the presence of guards or policemen has not been enough to deter an attack. Perhaps, therefore, the state should change tack slightly: arm communities with the knowledge of what polio is. If sufficient desire is cultivated amongst people to have their children vaccinated, the extremists who carry out the attacks will be denied fertile ground from which to perpetrate violence. Attacking polio teams and resisting the vaccination are two different things, but they are not unrelated.