ALTHOUGH decades of effort have passed in the pursuit of polio eradication, Pakistan has still not managed to achieve the goal. There has been renewed global focus on this country of late, and perhaps prompted by the need to not just take action but to be seen to be taking it, there have recently been some attempts to rise to the challenge.

Given that refusals to let the vaccine be administered to children had been allowed to grow into such a significant problem, Pakistan felt it necessary to take the harsh step of making such responses an offence deserving of arrest.

Meanwhile, last August, the country put the injectable polio vaccine on its routine immunisation schedule. The first phase of the IPV drive has already been concluded in a few districts of Balochistan. And on Wednesday, the second phase of the drive was launched in 18 union councils of Balochistan’s high-risk Killa Abdullah district, aiming to reach over 16,000 children.

To be sure, there are some advantages to the IPV. For one thing, it carries an inactive virus which means that there is no danger of the recipient contracting the vaccine-acquired polio paralysis (no matter how fractional the incidence of VAPP may be).

Second, it needs to be administered only once, removing the hurdle of the OPV that is given in phased follow-up doses that require each child to be vaccinated several times. This should be balanced, though, with the negatives, one being that the injection must be administered by a paramedic (as opposed to an untrained volunteer).

Given that the state has put its weight behind the IPV, we can only hope that time will produce encouraging results.

Also on Wednesday, Bill Gates — whose foundation has donated billions to fighting polio as well as other diseases — said at a moot in Doha that “with any luck”, polio would be eradicated in Pakistan and Afghanistan by 2017.

Though the ground realities dictate a measure of cynicism, we hope that his prediction will prove correct.

Published in Dawn, April 17th, 2016