PESHAWAR: The maiden anti-polio campaign of the new year will be started today (Monday) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to vaccinate 7.2 million children in the first phase.

All the 20 polio cases recorded in the country in 2022 belonged to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Seven policemen and about as many health workers were killed in attacks on polio teams by unidentified assailants.

The first vaccination drive of the year 2023 will be carried out in two phases. In the first phase, starting from Monday, 7.2 million children will be vaccinated in Bannu, Lakki Marwat, North Waziristan, Dera Ismail Khan, Tank and Upper and Lower South Waziristan districts of the province.

The second phase of the drive will be launched on January 16 in 29 districts of the province.

Last year, 16 immunisation drives took place in the province. In each campaign, 26,000 to 42,000 policemen took part to provide security to vaccinators. Police suffered 14 violent attacks during which seven cops were killed. Five police personnel sustained injuries in the attacks.

7.2 million children to be vaccinated in first phase being launched today

In 2021, Pakistan reported one polio case. In 2022, 20 police cases, all from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, were recorded in the country. These included 17 from North Waziristan, two from Lakki Marwat and one from South Waziristan.

Health workers associated with the vaccination campaigns told Dawn that situation with regard to polio cases would be no different in 2023 as the causative agents still existed.

Most of children affected by poliomyelitis in the province had either refused drops or had taken a few doses of vaccine that were not suffice to safeguard them against the vaccine-preventable childhood ailments.

In most of the infected districts, especially North Waziristan which remained home to bulk of cases, health workers faced violence from the opponents of the immunisation. Out of fear of reprisals, the vaccinators resorted to fake finger marking to avoid violence. Under the strategy, the fingers of children are marked with indelible ink after they get immunised but the people forced marking the fingers of their children without administering drops to them.

Administration in the endemic districts tried its level best to do away with the misconceptions regarding polio immunisation and pave the way for smooth-sailing of the effort as part of the strategy to eliminate the virus. The respective administrations enlisted support of religious scholars to convince parents for vaccination of their children in the light of Islamic teachings.

Officials said that some parents were against vaccination because they thought that no medicine was allowed till the occurrence of the disease while other argued that the drops were meant to render the children infertile and impotent and cut down population of Muslims as part of Western agenda.

“Our scholars and prayer leaders have been persuading people that in accordance with the teachings of Islam, the parents are required to ensure the better health of their children and there are no religious instructions against preventive medication against any sickness,” they said.

Officials said that religious scholars were telling people to stop the propaganda that the vaccine contained any ingredient to stop production of children but it was simply aimed to protect children from disabilities.

They said that in some cases people conditioned provision of facilities of roads, water and electricity to administration of anti-polio drops to their children. They added that government was making every effort to ensure vaccination and eradicate polio from the province but those issues had been hampering the effort for the last two decades.

“Polio vaccination has seen ups and downs since the beginning but defiance by parents has been the most pressing problem. Less than one per cent of the target children stay unimmunised due to which the virus will remain and continue to infect kids and add to the disabilities,” said officials.

Published in Dawn, january 2th, 2023