May 06, 2008	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 29, 1429

ISLAMABAD, May 5: Sindh, the new polio hotspot in the country, has refused to accept federal government’s help in controlling the new outbreak and wants to handle the situation on its own.

The province, some experts said, posed a serious threat of the virus travelling to polio-free areas of the country.

“The Sindh chief secretary was offered assistance, but he thinks provincial authorities are capable of dealing with the issue,” a senior federal health ministry official said on Monday as the country launched this year’s second National Immunisation Days (NID) Campaign to vaccinate 33 million children against the disease, whose eradication still remains elusive.

This year five polio cases have so far been reported in the country, incidentally all from Sindh, which had also reported the highest number of cases last year.

Fresh cases from Sindh sent alarm bells ringing among national and international agencies handling polio vaccination and which had been emphatically claiming that the country was on the verge of eradicating the disease.

“With each new case, the country’s goal of eradicating polio slips farther away,” the official said.

Federal Information Minister Sherry Rehman, who also holds the charge of health ministry, a source said, would be taking up the issue with Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, pleading with him to ensure political and administrative commitment for preventing the spread of polio virus.Blaming the provincial authorities for the failure of programme, a report by the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said the responsibility rested with the province’s management, particularly those who had the authority and capability of ensuring that immunisation was carried out with the required quality.

H. B. Memon, national manager of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation, which manages NID polio vaccination campaigns, said that ‘Sindh suffered from managerial problems’.

“The continuous transfer of the leadership of the provincial health department did not help either and took the focus away from the campaign,” he said.

Besides bureaucratic lethargy, experts believe, problems lay with the effectiveness of the vaccination strategy and a possible failure to reach all children.

It may be mentioned that a complete plan chalked out by WHO’s TAG for augmenting the polio eradication campaign in the province hasn’t been implemented yet.

“The TAG’s plans are being considered,” said Mr Memon.

The TAG recommendations called for making nonchalant authorities accountable and initiating special campaigns in Karachi, which was ‘playing a very concerning role for receiving and spreading the infection’.

It should be recalled that Sindh had utilisation control of $41 million Norwegian assistance for Mother and Neo-natal Child Health (MNCH) Programme before the donor refused to work with the provincial authorities because of governance issues.