July 29, 2007	Sunday	Rajab 13, 1428

PESHAWAR, July 28: The United Nations hopes that polio will soon be eradicated in Pakistan, but calls for more concerted efforts to do away with problems hampering smooth functioning of the campaign.

“The UN is spending about $15 million a year in healthcare. It is due to the overwhelming response from the people that Pakistan, which used to record 25,000 polio cases before 1994, has detected only 11 cases in 2007,” said Dr Khalife Mahmud Bile, WHO’s country representative.

He was speaking at a workshop on “refusals by parents to vaccinate their children against polio, inaccessibility of health workers to harder areas and lack of security for health workers” on Saturday.

Dr Bile said Pakistan had done remarkably well as compared to India, Afghanistan and Nigeria as far as efforts against polio were concerned.

He said workers involved in social activities should be provided security so they could perform their duties fearlessly. He said it was difficult to work in the hard terrain of Fata.

Terje Thodesen, principal officer (emergency), Unicef Pakistan, said his organisation was making efforts in the area of child development. He sought cooperation of tribal elders and community people to make Pakistan a polio-free country.

“We will extend every possible assistance to improve maternal health, water and sanitation and emergency preparedness,” he said. Unicef was at the forefront to support the reform programme of the government, he said.

Dr Abdul Jamil of Unicef said nine points had been established along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to ensure immunisation of children frequently visiting Afghanistan and control cross-border transmission of polio virus.

“The anti-polio campaign is blessing in disguise because we have been able to train thousand of volunteers whose services can be used in measles’ eradication and other health interventions in future,” he said. Furthermore, he added, the gap among the community, government and donor agencies had been bridged.

He said it was possible to eliminate the crippling ailment because 125 countries had already eradicated polio virus.

Fata health director Dr Zubair Khan said refusal by parents against vaccination, inaccessibility of vaccinators and security were some of the problems hindering the polio campaign.

“Political authorities are now focussing on polio eradication. The government is also alive to the problem,” he said. The government had been informed of security problems of health workers in tribal areas, he added.

He stressed the need for providing more facilities to health workers so they could work with devotion.Participants of the workshop were later divided into three groups, who made recommendations to scale up anti-polio efforts in Fata.

They proposed formation of jirgas at the tehsil level to arrest the problem of refusal. Such jirgas comprising local ulema, teachers, journalists and community elders should convince people to vaccinate their children against polio.

They also called for involving lady health visitors in the campaign in their respective localities.

Dr Iftikhar Ali, Dr Pervez Kamal, Dr Sarfaraz Khan Afridi, Dr Saeed Akbar Khan, MNAs Maulvi Abdul Malik and Maulvi Nek Zaman also spoke on the occasion.