PESHAWAR, Feb 12: The NWFP health department has designated four districts as high-risk areas for the polio after reporting more refusals by the parents to vaccinate their children against the disease.

According to the post-campaign monitoring report of the National Immunization Day (NID) of January, 32 per cent parents in Tank, 30 per cent in Swat, 20 per cent in Shangla and 17 per cent in Lakki Marwat districts refused to allow vaccinators to immunize their children below the age of five years.

Officials said that a total of 24,288 parents refused vaccination of their children in the three-day campaign carried out from January 16. They said that the refusals by parents had put at the risk of polio about 160,000 children in the Frontier province and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

Experts have termed the four districts high-risk and expressed apprehensions that the polio could engulf these areas. Health officials said that in most of these districts there was an organised anti-polio campaign through illegally-run FM radios.

Local clerics were asking the people to refrain from vaccinating their children against polio. They say that oral polio vaccines (OPVs) were a tool by the US and its allies to render the next generation sexually impotent.

Officials, however, are pinning their hopes for doing away with these rumours through the services of local clerics.

They say that they were in contact with the local Pesh Imams and religious scholars to ask the parents in these districts to immunise their children and save them from the crippling ailment.

Health officials said that rumours against the anti-polio campaign was adversely affecting the campaign and it was unlikely the province could get rid off the polio during the current year. Not only in these four districts, but the report said that the refusal by the parents to vaccinate their offspring had also been reported from other districts and tribal agencies.

According to the report, 15 per cent parents in Mohmand Agency, 14 per cent in Abbottabad, 13 per cent in Hangu, 12 per cent North Waziristan Agency, 10 per cent each in Mardan district and in Khyber Agency, nine per cent in South Waziristan Agency, six per cent in Malakand, five per cent in Haripur, one per cent in Bajaur Agency, four per cent each in Peshawar, Swabi and Bannu, two per cent in Battagram, three per cent in Charsadda, four per cent in Dera Ismail Khan and three per cent in Upper Dir refused vaccination to their children.

However, there was no refusal from Lower Dir, Mansehra, Buner, Karak, Kohistan, Kurram and Orakzai agencies.

The report also said that more than 3,800 children were missed during the campaign for reasons other than refusals.

They said that the missed children would be covered in a special campaign. The report said that as a whole, about eight per cent parents refused to immunise their children against polio in the NWFP and Fata in January.

The Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) is conducting eight rounds of immunization annually in the Frontier and adjacent tribal belt and about Rs53 million is spent on each round by the WHO and Rs34million by the Unicef for training and capacity building of the staff.

Official said that only one case had so far been recorded in the NWFP, but indications are that the disease would haunt the children in future.