PESHAWAR: The district administrations and police in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have issued hundreds of arrest warrants for the parents refusing to vaccinate their children.

“I have issued 1,000 arrest warrants over vaccination refusal,” Peshawar deputy commissioner Riaz Khan Mehsud told Dawn. Mehsud said the district had 13,000 to 16,000 vaccination refusal cases but there was a total determination on the administration’s part to cut them.

“We will convince parents about the importance of vaccinating children but if they refuse, we will detain them. There will be no leniency towards them,” he said.

1,000 face detention in Peshawar, over 300 in Nowshera

The police in the neighbouring Nowshera district said they had issued arrest warrants for more than 300 parents over vaccination refusal. “We have arrested more than 20 parents for declining their children’s vaccination,” Nowshera district police officer Rab Nawaz Khan said.

The relevant government officials said the action was being taken against such parents across the province.

They, however, said they couldn’t give the total number of arrest warrants issued so far. “The number keeps fluctuating,” a senior government official said. “We are applying different laws. You have to resort to coercive measures when persuasion fails.” The official said the application of laws was working.

“Some parents readily agree to vaccinate children to avoid detention. Others spend few days behind bars to see the reason. We take an affidavit from them and let them go if they bring children for vaccination,” he said.

The official said the laws applied were not polio-specific.

“We are applying different sections of the law, depending on the situation.”

Pakistan broke its own record of 199 polio cases in 2000 in 2014 when 306 new cases of the crippling disease were reported across the country, causing an international concern leading to travel restrictions for Pakistanis.

“All this happened due to complacency and a very bad security situation. Of the nationwide polio cases in 2014, 100 were reported in North and South Waziristan agencies. The tribal region were inaccessible. Our polio team either did not have access or were targeted,” said Dr Imtiaz Ali Shah, head of the Chief Minister’s Polio Monitoring Cell.

He said the launch of a military operation in North Waziristan and Khyber agencies led to dislocation of local people, who took the virus with them everywhere they went be it Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan or Sindh. “There were polio reports from everywhere. There was a ping pong, cases popping up here, cases popping up there,” Dr Imtiaz said.

He said the military operation against militants and displacement of people had provided the best chance to polio team to access the population, which was hitherto beyond the reach of vaccinators for security reasons.

Dr Imtiaz said 13 polio cases had so far been reported in the country, including 11 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and adjoining tribal region.“We have better access and better monitoring now.

“The quality of the polio campaign has improved. I am confident that the cases will come down to less than 100 this year. There will be fewer cases,” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2015

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