ISLAMABAD: The polio programme has approached the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to play its role in stopping a malicious campaign against the polio vaccine on social media.

“An organised negative campaign starts before every polio campaign. We have young children dying every day due to a variety of reasons: respiratory infections and diarrhoea being the major killers. Measles outbreaks also continue to happen. But evil minds intentionally correlate such deaths with polio vaccine creating confusion among the parents,” head of the Emergency Operation Centre for Polio Dr Rana Safdar told Dawn.

He said just before the polio campaigns, a number of dubbed videos were shared on the social media asking parents not to get their children vaccinated.

Sometimes parents show the vaccinators such videos and refuse to get their children vaccinated. “Though we have also provided video clips and massages to the vaccinators to counter the campaign it takes 15 minutes to convince the parents to allow vaccinating their children. Otherwise this job can be completed in just two minutes.”

Dr Safdar said WhatsApp had become a major hurdle as it becomes impossible to identify from where the message was originated.

He said the vaccinators had been directed to cover most of the children on the first day of the campaign starting from May 7 so that during the next days they would concentrate on the refusal cases. The PTA has also been requested to help in addressing the issue related to the social media, he said.

The last polio campaign of the 2017-18 low transmission season will commence on May 7 in 109 districts/agencies /towns.

It has been decided that the polio campaigns would be launched simultaneously in Pakistan and Afghanistan to ensure that no child is missed.

It has been observed that some children were missed in Pakistan as they were in Afghanistan during the campaigns and were in Pakistan when campaigns were underway in Afghanistan.

A total of around 23.8 million under five children will be vaccinated including 7.8m in Punjab (12 districts), 8.17m in Sindh, 4.46m in KP, 1.98m in Balochistan 1.04m in Fata and 0.333m in Islamabad. As many as 161,000 personnel will strive to achieve set targets across Pakistan including 16,673 area incharges, 4,561 UC medical officers, 122,432 mobile, 5,728 fixed and 8,044 transit team members.

Pakistan is closest ever to interrupt the virus transmission. Cases have declined from 306 in 2014 to 54 in 2015 to 20 in 2016 and eight in 2017. In 2018, only one polio case has been reported from the district of Dukki in Balochistan.

Dr Safdar said the oral polio vaccine was the safest and most effective tool available today to achieve eradication. A stringent mechanism is in place to ensure the quality of all vaccines used in Pakistan both in routine and during campaigns right from manufacturing to its end use, he added.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2018