DESPITE government efforts against the eradication of polio, there is a rapid rise in reported cases across the country. Recently, two new polio cases were confirmed in the Lakki Marwat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

This takes the total to 64 reported cases so far this year — out of which 48 are from KP, six in Sindh and five in Punjab.

I feel that the polio teams should conduct more awareness campaigns in the country — every city, town, UC and village — to take parents into confidence regarding the vaccinations and to explain why the vaccine is useful for their child and others around him/her.

The government should take action against those individuals who create and share fake videos and negative propaganda against the vaccine. and I request parents to support the polio workers and vaccinate their children against this crippling disease before the situation gets out of hand.

According to Unicef, Pakistan is one of the three remaining polio-endemic countries in the world, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria. However, since the launch of Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Programme in 1994, there has been a massive decline in polio cases in Pakistan from approximately 20,000 every year in the early 1990s to only eight cases in 2018.

“As long as the virus continues to circulate in Pakistan, no child in Pakistan is completely safe from contracting the polio virus. This is why it is the shared responsibility of all Pakistanis ensure that all vulnerable children under the age of five are vaccinated against this deadly disease in every door-to-door campaign,” it added.

Muhammad Bakhtiyar
Kech

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2019