PESHAWAR: The move of administration to revert from arrest of parents for refusing oral polio vaccine to enhanced advocacy regarding its significance has led to convince more than 10,000 parents in Peshawar to immunise their children against the crippling disease.

“With complete cooperation of district nazim and other local government representatives, religious resource persons and local elders, we are working to brush aside the misconception about polio vaccine. We haven’t arrested any parent for defying OPV but we are wooing them logically and the strategy has paid off,” Shahid Mehmood, the acting deputy commissioner, told Dawn.

He said that multiple channels were being used to alley people’s fear about efficacy of vaccines due to propagation of certain elements under misconceptions that those rendered the recipients infertile or the drops were not allowed in Islam. The official said that number of refusal cases also swelled following reports of alleged death of two children from vaccination in Bara, Khyber Agency last month.

“Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has 770,000 target children of which 108,000 remained unvaccinated in the past two days of the year’s first campaign started on Monday,” he said. He added that the missed children were either not available when workers visited their houses or the parents showed defiance.

Official says over 10,000 parents in Peshawar convinced to vaccinate their children

The official said that unvaccinated children accounted for less than one per cent of the target population, which was permissible under National Emergency Polio Plan. He said that only 3,500 refusal cases remained in Peshawar, one of the three polio reservoirs in the country. “Our teams are out to vaccinate all children,” he added.

The environmental water sample tested negative from Larama, one of the two sites, in December that indicates that virus doesn’t exist in the water. It tested positive in November after staying negative for 14 consecutive months. The virus detected in the water in November according to genetic sequencing belonged to Lahore.

“Peshawar has the largest number of refusals in the province that also include 5,000 children, who didn’t reside here but were recorded by health workers,” said Mr Mehmood. He said that social mobilisation activities gave boost to their efforts to deal with unvaccinated children.

The official said that polio eradication activities at the provincial level also continued with focus on unimmunised children, who posed threat to the campaign and allowed the virus to circulate and infect children.

“Security situation has improved owing to deployment of police and eight platoon of FC especially at entry and exit points to facilitate fearless movement of vaccinators,” he said.

Sources said that there was no polio-related incident of killing in 2016 owing to which the health workers felt emboldened. Since 2012, militants killed about 40 persons to thwart vaccination campaign in the province due to which people hesitated to become part of the immunisation drives.

Last year, the administration arrested more than 1,000 parents for refusing OPV in central and southern districts of the province that created problems for the health workers. In many areas refusals increased.

“There has not been any arrest and priority is given to scale up public knowledge of OPV so the people can give two drops of OPV to their children in every campaign till five years and allow them to grow healthy,” said sources.

They said that vaccination safeguarded children against paralysis, which crippled and handicapped them for rest of their lives.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2017