WHILE both the state and the provinces have by all accounts been putting in efforts to traverse the increasingly challenging terrain that the countrywide polio vaccination effort is, it is noteworthy that political and other leaders have largely remained silent. In the several years that have passed since opposition to the vaccination first reared its head — Mullah Fazlullah’s campaign through his illegal radio broadcasts was notorious in this regard — the country has seen an increasing trend of vaccine refusals. Worse, polio workers and their escorts have come under attack from KP to Karachi. For years, now, it has been obvious that the inability to control the spread of polio poses a clear and mounting danger to the health and freedoms of Pakistanis, given that in 2011 the Independent Monitoring Board for Polio Eradication recommended a travel ban. Yet the very leaders who otherwise routinely trot out the ‘national interest’ arguments have spoken barely a word on an issue that cuts right to the heart of the future of this country.

It comes as something of a relief, then, that PTI chief Imran Khan has expressed his resolve to get involved in the matter. On Wednesday, he administered vaccination drops to children near Peshawar. His visit to the home of a policeman killed recently in a polio-related attack too sends out the right signals. Let alone the fact that his party is at the helm of affairs in KP, where the vaccination campaign is under greatest pressure, there is a lot that a person in Mr Khan’s position can bring to the effort. Besides being a politician with proven popularity amongst the younger generation of voters he is also the cricket idol of millions around the country. With the Jamaat-i-Islami as an ally in the KP government, he has the attention of religio-political parties and conservative sections of society. The anti-polio effort needs the involvement of high-profile people to lift it to the forefront of public consciousness; if more national leaders and heroes joined in, the tide could yet be turned. The effort that started more than two decades ago with the then prime minister Benazir Bhutto administering polio drops to her child is badly in need of similar shows of solidarity from powerful quarters.