LANDI KOTAL, June 17: The anti-polio campaign conducted after a gap of about 20 months in Khyber Agency failed to achieve any worthwhile success, as majority of children were missed and health officials say they will repeat the exercise on Monday (June 20).

The officials admitted on Friday that the three-day campaign held from June 13-15 ended without reaching the target children.

“The results are not very encouraging despite our sincere efforts,” said Assistant Political Agent of Bara tehsil Rehan Khattak.

He said that only a few hundred parents turned up with their children at the designated vaccination points in the tribal agency. Mr Khattak, however, admitted that insecurity was still the main concern for most of Bara residents where not a single child was administered the vaccine.

The APA said that results were a bit encouraging in Meel Waat camp and Fort Salop where some people turned up with their children.

Over 100,000 children have not been vaccinated against polio due to the ongoing military operation in most parts of Bara since September 2009.

The health officials in collaboration with local administration and security forces established several points at the Bara tehsil offices, Fort Salop, Jansi Fort Akkakhel and Meel Waat camp to facilitate parents bring their children for vaccination against poliomyelitis virus.

The officials had also arranged for free medical treatment at these designated locations in order to attract maximum number of residents and make the anti-polio campaign a success.

Dr Sarfaraz, a representative of the World Health Organization, said that they were able to make some inroads in Qambarkhel area where they succeeded in getting support of a local religious organisation for the door-to-door campaign for polio vaccination.

Showing his dissatisfaction with overall results of the three-day exercise, he however, said that the health staff provided to them by political administration of Landi Kotal was not performing its duties according to the requirements.

“We are compelled to repeat the campaign on June 20 as we have reports about the health staff intentionally skipping a number of our target areas like Mirdadkhel, Sheikhmalkhel and Gagra where there are also previous refusal cases,” said Dr Sarfaraz.

He said that no laxity would be tolerated on the part of health workers during the repeat campaign.

Khyber Agency tops the seven tribal agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with a total of 35 polio-infected children of total 72 in Fata. At least 20 children from Bara have contracted the crippling virus since September 2009 while in Landi Kotal five new cases were discovered during a span of just six months, mostly due to refusal by parents to vaccinate their children.