IF further proof were needed that the hostility to the polio vaccination campaign is intensifying, it can be found in the attack on the outskirts of Peshawar on Monday. A small medical centre from where vaccination-related goods were being distributed was targeted with two remote-controlled bombs. While the larger explosive mercifully failed to detonate, two people — one of them a policeman — were killed and many more injured in the blast caused by the other bomb. This is perhaps the first time a health centre working on the issue has been targeted, and constitutes a worrying new dimension to the resistance to anti-polio efforts that has taken root in the country. Earlier, polio teams and workers have been attacked — sometimes killed — and in many cases their security escorts have also suffered. The net result: not only are unvaccinated children being increasingly exposed to a crippling, life-threatening disease, the herd immunity of the citizenry at large is also threatened with the resurgence of the poliovirus.

It is appalling that the issue has not received more attention from political quarters. The state’s response to this growing problem has on the whole been passive. True, security for polio workers has been provided where possible, but this is a defensive manoeuvre that falls far short of what is needed: for the government and political representatives, at both the provincial and the federal levels, to assertively take charge of the narrative and fight back against the obscurantists by owning and supporting the campaign. The silence, instead, has allowed regressive thinking to become so entrenched that a health centre is viewed as a target. A rollback can occur only if a counter-narrative is articulated and then aggressively promoted. In KP, for example, the involvement of the PTI’s Tabdeeli Razakars would send out a strong signal. A campaign that was kicked off with the then prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, administering the vaccine to her child is now in need of strong political support.