PESHAWAR, Dec 14: Resignations by some experienced polio eradication officers from the Polio Eradication Initiative of the WHO during past few months will adversely affect the efforts to end poliomyelitis in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), sources say.

“During past four months, seven polio officers have left the Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI). Of them four doctors resigned while services of three others were terminated for poor performance,” a senior official at the PEI told Dawn on condition of anonymity.

He said that the doctors left their jobs at a time when eliminating polio had become a challenge for the government and the UN agencies. He claimed that the officers left their jobs due to the 'rough attitude' of the authorities.

The sources confirmed that polio eradiation officers in Nowshera, Kohat, Dera Ismail Khan, Malakand and Peshawar had quit their jobs since April this year.

They said that the absence of experienced staff in the three-day anti-polio campaign, starting from Dec 19, would be desperately felt as their replacements were not immediately available. They said that the Fata had recorded 49 and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 19 polio cases of the country's total of 167 cases and the government was under immense pressure to improve vaccination to eradicate the crippling ailment.

“We have planned to run quality vaccination campaign because law and order situation has improved in Fata and the transmission remains low from December to April,” said an official of the health department.

The WHO launched the PEI in 1994 when it declared polio as emergency. It is supposed to provide technical and financial assistance to the government and ensure that all children below five years receive the oral polio vaccine (OPV).

The sources claimed that some of the doctors were humiliated to the point that they could not continue working under the present administration and opted to resign.

“In one case, a doctor quit the job after being kept waiting for renewal of his contract for about two months,” they said.

Another senior public health expert, who resigned two months ago, said he was not at ease with the PEI's new head.

“The team leader of the PEI was the sole cause of my resignation,” said another polio eradication officer. He said that for the first time the WHO had appointed a national staffer as provincial team leader. The post is held by international employees in other provinces as per rules, he said and added that national staffer was appointed only in emergency.

“Why should I be resigning from a post on which I worked for eight years, but the working environment was not good for me to continue,” said another doctor, who resigned from his post four months ago.

According to other sources, the present PEI team leader was trying his best to show better results and justify his posting. They said that only those doctors who could not achieve targets were shown the door.

About 35 polio eradication officers worked in the province and Fata, sources said. No one in the PEI responded calls by this correspondent to offer their comment on the issue.