KARACHI: Noticing that a significant number of internally-displaced peoples (IDPs) from the North Waziristan Agency (NWA) did not utilise the government’s mechanism to vaccinate their children against polio, the provincial health authorities have devised certain ‘effective measures’ to reach out to the maximum number of people — children in particular — to minimise polio risks in the world’s only metropolis where virus of the crippling disease is found, it emerged on Wednesday.

The health authorities had put up facilities at all the entry points of Karachi soon after the launch of the military operation in the NWA in June to target a population that lived in the areas where no polio campaigns could be carried out because of security concerns.

Officials said that they had vaccinated thousands of children against polio since their families entered Sindh after days-long arduous trek across mountains.

However, they added, they could just target those families and individuals whom they spotted in buses and trains while a large number of those coming in cars and other small vehicles could not be reached.

“Our teams are intercepting buses and large vans coming from Waziristan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and vaccinating children and people, but it is difficult to intercept a large number of small vehicles entering the city as we do not know where they are coming from,” said a senior official in the provincial health department while speaking to Dawn.

Similarly, the official said, because of the railway authorities’ restriction on going inside the trains coming from the northwest areas, it was highly difficult for the teams on the railway stations to tap all the passengers to inoculate them.

“The railway authorities do not permit our teams to go inside the train primarily due to security concerns leaving them to stay on and wait for the passengers to come out and get immunised against polio. This makes it difficult to reach everyone and in the process a significant number of passengers slip away without being vaccinated,” the official added.

The sources in the government said that they were already in consultation with the railway ministry, which falls under the control of the federal government, in a bid to make the exercise more effective and protect the city from the poliovirus.

The city has already reported eight confirmed polio cases — seven of them from its western fringes with four only from Gadap, which is considered the highly polio-infested neighbourhood with greater resistance against polio immunisation that spawned many attacks on doctors and volunteers in the past causing many fatalities.

The country, which has already recorded 99 polio cases in the seven months of the current year and more than 93 cases were reported last year, is already slapped with travel sanctions by the World Health Organisation.

“It is hugely imperative for us not to allow anyone coming from the NWA settling unchecked in Karachi or elsewhere in Sindh for the reason that that population can bring confirmed polio cases and the virus could spread through sewers, which could inflict local young population as well,” said a senior government official.

The sources said as the communication with the railways department was already under way, the expanded programme on immunisation of Sindh had proposed to constitute a number of two-member teams with the mandate to travel in trains between Karachi and Peshawar and during their travel they would vaccinate everyone belonging to the northwest in particular against polio.

“Such steps will help a great deal if they are approved and duly financed,” said a source.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2014