PESHAWAR, Feb 18: Health officials say they won’t participate in the three-day anti-polio campaign in parts of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), which will start on Feb 20.

“Vaccinators have shown their reluctance to be part of anti-polio teams in the Fata after the killing of surgeon Dr Abdul Ghani Khan in the Bajaur Agency in a remote-controlled bomb explosion on Feb 16,” said an official associated with the anti-polio campaign.

He said the Bajaur Agency, which had reported four polio cases last year, was a difficult area and they feared the disease might turn into an epidemic if an aggressive vaccination campaign was not launched there. “The only case, the province has reported this year from Nowshera district, had also connection with the Bajaur Agency. The family of the child had been shifted from Bajaur to Nowshera they still frequented the agency in connection with meeting their relatives,” said the official.

“We are going to lay more focus on the Bajaur Agency. During the last campaign conducted in January, one per cent of the parents had refused immunisation of their children,” he said, adding that if the security situation was not improved there is more likelihood that the health staff did not take part in the Feb 20 anti-polio campaign.

He said that three health staffers also got injured besides the death of Dr Abdul Ghani Khan, which had sent waves of fears across the agency. The official said that they were in contact with the religious leaders and elders in the Bajaur Agency and other high-risk districts and agencies to make sure that all children of immunisation age get vaccinated. A WHO official told Dawn that the problem of refusals to oral polio vaccines (OPVs) is becoming albatross around the necks of the government as well as donor agencies.

The people in Bajaur and other high-risk districts and Fata units have been refusing OPVs on the plea that these cause sexual impotence and sterility, he said, adding that it was the government to solve this problem, once and for all.