PESHAWAR: A new communication strategy being introduced by United Nations Children Fund to cope with refusal against oral polio vaccine is unlikely to make any breakthrough in eradication of polio in Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to relevant officials.

They said that United Nations Children Fund (Unicef), which was responsible to do away with refusal against OPV, was introducing a new communication strategy for polio eradication in Pakhtun-inhabited areas with focus on increasing ‘threat perception’ for the low-transmission season starting from January.

The Unicef has been supporting Pakistan’s polio eradication programme through mobilisation since 1994, but more than 40,000 parents refuse to administer anti-polio vaccine to their children in every campaign.

It consigned into dustbin the government’s efforts of vaccinating six million children in Fata and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, sources said.

More than 40,000 parents refuse to administer the vaccine to their children in every campaign in Fata and KP.

They said that Pakistan recorded 295 polio cases in 2014 so far and half of the victims remained unvaccinated due to refusal by their parents. Fata has recorded 174 polio cases, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 67, Sindh 29, Balochistan 22 and Punjab three polio cases.

“Following employing several strategies from time to time, Unicef hasn’t been able to put brakes on refusal against the vaccine which according to health department has hampered the polio eradication efforts,” sources said.

The health department has been insisting that the refusal against the vaccine must end to do away with the childhood ailment in Fata and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

To put in place a new communication strategy for Fata and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a two-day workshop, held on December 14 at the headquarters of Emergency Operations Centre in Islamabad, was informed that there was a need to increase the level of threat from polio so the parents could administer OPV to their children.

According to a document, copy of which is available with Dawn, Unicef senior communication manager Sherine Guirguis told the workshop that although majority of the people perceived polio as a present danger and threat to their children yet a significant minority (36 per cent in non-Fata and 45 per cent in Fata) was not concerned enough about polio.

It was likely that there were multiple reasons for that diminished perception of the polio threat, she said.

“Increasing the perception in attention-getting ways that communicate the close proximity and active nature of the virus could be an opportunity,” she said, according to document.

Ms Guirguis said that the perception of broad support for vaccine wasn’t high enough and provided a potential opportunity for improvement across all audiences, including parents, health workers, neighbours, grandparents and religious leaders.

She also presented a recently- conducted polling data on polio and vaccination perceptions in high-risk areas of Pakistan while first-hand insights on Pakhtun culture and beliefs were shared by Pakhtun representatives at the workshop.

Pakhtuns live in some of the most remote and underserved areas of the country which makes them vulnerable to polio. At the end of the workshop, a consensus was emerged to amend communication strategy to reinvigorate the overall anti-polio communication approach.

It was agreed that a greater focus must be placed on the five per cent of population that was currently not covered.

Relevant officials told Dawn that more focus on polio had already caused harm to polio eradication programme as the people often questioned the high-profile campaigns while leaving aside other ailments. Response to the campaign against other eight vaccine-preventable diseases was satisfactory because the government ran it through the routine programme, they said.

Officials said that creating threats against polio would further affect the eradication campaign in Fata and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where a section of society opposed it.

The Unicef spokesperson didn’t respond to telephone calls made by this correspondent to get his version.

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2014