PESHWAR: The Federally Administered Tribal Areas authorities intends to use the World Health Organisation’s international travel restrictions on Pakistanis as a tool to scale up public awareness of vaccination for child health, especially in areas, which are inaccessible for them.

The three-day vaccination campaign launched on Monday doesn’t cover North and South Waziristan agencies due to the Taliban’s ban, which has been in place since June 2012, so using alternate means to administer anti-polio drops to children there has been planned.

The campaign will not be carried out in Mohmand Agency and Frontier Region, Bannu for security reasons.

The relevant officials told Dawn on Monday that around 600,000 people from Fata worked abroad, especially in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, US and UK, who would now be required to get two drops of the oral polio vaccine (OPV) to be able to fly back to their destinations from Pakistan.

They said every year, around 50,000 people from tribal areas went to Saudi Arabia for Haj and around 40,000 for Umrah.

Every year, 50,000 tribesmen perform Haj, 40,000 Umrah

“We can prevail upon the people in North and South Waziristan that vaccination is so important that it is required by the Saudis for Haj and Umrah. Now, nobody could perform these religious rituals without vaccination,” an official said.

This, he said, will be part of the strategy that our workers will spread information about the OPV significance in light of the WHO travel restrictions on Pakistanis.

On May 5, the WHO recommended ban on the Pakistanis without vaccination in an effort to stop transmission of polio virus to the countries declared free of polio long ago.

Until now, there’s a misconception that OPV was a ploy used by the West to render the recipients incapable of producing children.

However, the people now realise its significance as the people traveling for Haj and Umrah will also get it.

Fata has recorded 53 cases of the total 67 in the country in 2014 so far. North and South Waziristan agencies had 44 and five cases respectively as no vaccination campaign had been carried out there for 22 months.

“As there are no efforts in sight by the government to get the Taliban’s ban lifted, the people and the community have the responsibility to ensure that the children get OPV and stay safe from being crippled,” one agency surgeon told Dawn.

He said the directorate of Fata had deployed 4,470 vaccinators besides setting up 206 fixed centres and 65 transit points to reach 6,21,681 targeted children amid tight security arrangements in designated agencies and Frontier Regions.

“We need to motivate people and create demand for OPV among parents,” he said.

Meanwhile, additional chief secretary of Fata Arbab Mohammad Arif, who inaugurated the campaign at the Fata Secretariat in Peshawar, on Monday called upon the people to cooperate with vaccinators and ensure that all targeted children less than five years of age to protect them from the disabilities and rid the society from polio once and for all.

Fata director (health) Pervez Kamal said children desperately needed vaccination for protection against diseases.

He said polio was the only disease, which could be completely eradicated through vaccination.

“Vaccination of adults before boarding planes will scale up awareness among the parents about the importance of the OPV,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2014