PESHAWAR: The government’s failure to reach out to the unvaccinated children in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas has led to the appearance of three more polio cases in the restive region.

This time around, all the cases are reported in Khyber Agency.

Until now this year, the countrywide polio count is 147.

According to the relevant officials, the new cases include 18-month-old Abdul Rauf from Merikhel village, eight-month-old Saliha from Bara tehsil and Muhib from Jamrud tehsil.

None of these children have ever been given oral polio vaccine due to the health workers’ failure to reach out to them for insecurity in the area.

Officials fear more such cases in troubled Fata

The officials said Fata leading the national polio count this year with 107 cases had been the major impediment in the global polio eradication campaign due to the presence of unimmunised children there.

“We fear more children will be infected by polio virus in September, the high transmission month,” an official said.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has reported 25 polio cases this year and at least five of them were scientifically proven to have originated in Fata.

Fata, which has never been able to vaccinate its targeted population of around nine million since the global polio eradication initiative began in Pakistan in mid 90s, has become a real challenge for the government and UN agencies, which are finding it extremely hard to address reach unvaccinated children and address vaccination refusal cases.

There are around 50,000 vaccination refusal cases in around 30,000 Fata children, who were approached by vaccinators, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reports around 35,000 such cases in every vaccination campaign.

According to officials, a lot has to be done to contain refusal cases.

They said selection of good anti-polio teams would greatly help reduce vaccination refusals, while that should be supplemented by extended follow-up of defiant families.

The officials said a public awareness campaign to highlight the significance of oral polio vaccine was a prelude to ending the wrong impression that vaccination caused infertility or were disallowed in Islam.

They said by and large, the campaign hadn’t gotten good response as defiant families continued to be unwilling to vaccinate their children.

The officials said as long as a single unvaccinated child was present in the world, he or she could transport the virus of the crippling diseased anywhere.

They feared more children would be affected by polio in September, the high transmission month.

According to officials, the health department has carried out many vaccination campaigns in Bara tehsil over a period of time, where more and more polio cases are being reported.

They said mass vaccination continued to be a necessity in Fata.

The officials said another major hurdle to the fight against polio was displacement of children from North Waziristan Agency, where the Taliban had banned vaccination in June 2012.

They said anti-polio campaigns had been carried out in Bannu, where most of the displaced children lived, but many unvaccinated children had gone to other parts of the province so they weren’t easily traceable.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2014