PESHAWAR, Jan 18: Conceding that the past year had seen steep rise in polio cases in the province due to security reasons and cases of refusals, health department officials said they had devised elaborate measures to eradicate the crippling disease from the Frontier.

“We had been confronting about 7,000 cases of refusals against oral polio vaccine (OPV) only in Peshawar last year which had now come down to only 1,000 due to our efforts,” said Mohammad Ali Chauhan, executive district officer (EDO), health, Peshawar.

Speaking at a seminar, organised by the Peshawar Press Club in collaboration with Pakistan Medical Writers Association on Sunday, he said that the NWFP had recorded 52 cases of the total 118 in the country in 2008 and efforts were afoot to stem the tide of polio transmission.

“The NWFP had only 11 cases of the total 32 detected in 2007 throughout the country, but surge in the polio victims was also due to the presence of Afghan refugees who frequently visited to their country from where they brought the virus,” he claimed.

According to the EDO health, they had reported 23 cases of P3 virus which was found in Afghanistan. In the positive cases last year, eight children happened to be Afghans, who had got the infections from their country and later transmitted to the local children, he said.

Mr Chauhan said that Gara Tajik and surrounding areas of Mohmand Agency and Matani and Adezai were hard-to-reach by the vaccinators due to lack of security measures.

The three-day polio immunisation campaign starting from Jan 19 is aiming to vaccinate about 800,000 children below the age of five years with the help of 1,799 vaccinators and 301 supervisors. Lack of female vaccinators had adversely been affecting anti-polio drives in the province, he said, adding that they had planned to include two female vaccinators in every mobile team to be able to visit the homes and administer OPV to children.

He said that arrangements had been put in place to facilitate entry of the health workers to the inaccessible areas with the help of local elders and elected member of the district, provincial and National assemblies.

Some of the people, he said, were reluctant to allow male vaccinators to their area due to social taboos and the involvement of female vaccinators would have marked difference over the anti-polio efforts in the province.

Senator Azam Khan Swati, who presided over the seminar, urged the parents to ensure immunisation of their children to safeguard them from permanent disability in future. It was the basic right of the children to protect them against childhood diseases, he added.

The ulema should also play their role in the polio immunisation campaigns.

District Nazim Ghulam Ali stressed on religious leaders to highlight importance of anti-polio vaccines in their Friday sermons. He also called upon the elected representatives to extend helping hands to the health department to make the immunisation drive a success story.