PESHAWAR, Aug 29: NWFP health department has expressed concern over federal government’s move of placing Punjab’s polio cases in the Frontier province’s account. They said that the NWFP and Fata had so far recorded only four cases, but according to the federal government, the number was five.

According to the federal Ministry of Health, there had been a total of 12 polio cases this year so far. Out of the total, government statistics showed, there were five confirmed cases in the NWFP and Fata while Sindh also had the same number of cases. Only two cases were reported from Balochistan but Punjab was shown to be polio-free, according to federal government figures.

Sources in the health secretariat told Dawn that one Zaheer Ahmad, who originally belonged to Punjab but studied in Australia, had come to Pakistan in March and had visited Swat and Kalam along with some friends. The 22-year-old had also stayed for one night in Kalam in a hotel owned and run by people from Khyber Agency.

He left for Australia in June and was diagnosed to have had contracted polio in the first week of July.

Meanwhile, the Australian government communicated to the World Health Organisation’s office in Islamabad that the case had been imported from Pakistan because Australia had been declared polio-free 20 year ago. They said that the polio virus was tested for genetic sequencing and it closely resembled a polio case detected in Khyber Agency in October 2006.

“So, the federal government put the case in the NWFP and Fata account. This is a strange situation. We have conveyed our concern to the federal government that we do not own this case,” sources at the secretariat, said.

The federal government had asked the NWFP health department to allot a temporary number to the case, they said, adding that they were required to mention the name of the district with the case, but cannot do that because the case belonged to Punjab. One official said: “We have argued that virus in two of our cases (Afghan refugees) detected this year could be traced to Nangrahar and Kandahar. Therefore, those could be counted with Afghanistan.”

If this is the criteria, then, five of the 16 cases detected in NWFP and Fata were also Afghan refugees and be put in Afghanistan’s account. Sources said that this trend was dangerous for the province and tribal areas, where parents were refusing to administer anti-polio vaccine to children was increasing day by day.

“It is an extraordinary situation that a 22-year-old man had contracted polio. Only once, a couple in Japan had been diagnosed positive for polio in 2001,” they said.

Sources said that unhindered mobility of Afghan refugees across the border was a source of embarrassment for the province.