January 05, 2008	Saturday	Zilhaj 25, 1428

PESHAWAR, Jan 4: Fearing an outbreak of polio in Mardan district, the World Health Organisation has called for a special vaccination campaign to control the dreaded disease.

The health department, which confirmed the fifth case of poliomyelitis in Mardan on Friday, said the disease might have been caused by migration of people from Swat where an anti-polio vaccination drive could not be launched recently due to law and order problems. Officials said that for the last 14 months not a single child under five had been vaccinated against polio there.

“High-ranking officials of the ministry of health, Islamabad along with WHO officials are visiting Mardan to chalk out a strategy regarding the impending outbreak of polio,” sources told Dawn.

An emergency meeting held in Islamabad expressed concerns over the situation and decided to mount a special campaign. The health department has said the anti-polio campaign in Mardan district was not up to the mark.

The Mardan district remained polio-free for four years but recently several polio cases have been detected there. One Ahmad Ali, son of Imran of Muhib Banda, is suffering from polio and is the fifth case discovered within the last two days from the district.

Sources at the Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) of the WHO said the quality of the special polio immunisation campaigns in certain areas might have been suboptimal, primarily due to refusal by parents to get their children vaccinated. It was proposed that a mop-up campaign should be planned and implemented in Mardan as soon as possible.

The WHO said a special campaign be run in the Muhib Banda village, tehsil Mardan, and the Union Council Damn-i-Koh tehsil Takht Bhai, Muhib Banda, and the Union Council Chak Mardan tehsil and its adjacent areas.

The WHO said the areas were inhabited by people from the Bajaur and Mohmand agencies, migrants from conflict-hit Swat district and Afghan refugees due to which their relatives frequently visited them.

The Bajaur and Swat districts were proving to be a real problem for polio vaccinators as the people living there often refused to get their children vaccinated against the disease. They believed that the oral polio vaccine (OPV) caused impotence and infertility.

The provincial health department is faced with an uphill task because Mardan district has never reported more than 200 refusal cases. Those who had been diagnosed positive for the crippling ailment had got OPV but “the quality of OPV was perhaps not up to the mark”.

Health officials also confirmed that during the field observation some slackness had been observed in supervision and quality during the anti-polio campaigns in these areas. They said that they would examine the situation and would help the people responsible for the “faulty vaccination”.

An official said: “Vaccination doesn’t guarantee 100 per cent protection. The children suffering from diarrhoea, dysentery, low immunity and anaemia do not response to vaccination. Such children should be marked in the campaign and be immunized in a special anti-polio drive.”

They said that they were also examining whether such children could be identified.