PESHAWAR: The month-long protest by the doctors, paramedics and nurses under the banner of Grand Health Alliance has been affecting adversely essential immunisation.

The latest National Nutrition Survey says that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has 77 per cent fully immunised children standing at second number after Punjab.

“I took my son for vaccination to Zargarabad dispensary, Sinkandarpura public health centre and then Garhi Atta Mohammad but the workers said they were on strike,” a resident of Peshawar told this scribe. He added that he went back home with his unimmunised child.

Other parents said that health professionals had gone a step ahead of Taliban militants, who had banned only polio vaccination. “Now all vaccination isn’t available,” they added.

Concerns persist about success of next month’s anti-polio campaign

“Taliban banned vaccination in Waziristan when Dr Shakil Afridi was arrested for fake Hepatitis B vaccination to reach Osama bin Laden at the behest of the US but what is the rationale that children aren’t getting all sorts of vaccination without any fault of theirs,” they said.

The health department is negotiating with the protesters to safeguard children from vaccine-preventable diseases as the province has already experienced outbreaks of measles that caused several deaths during the last few months.

There is also growing concerns about the anti-polio campaign scheduled for next month because the health professionals have already been denying essential immunisation to the children and polio vaccination is likely to suffer further.

The expanded programme on immunisation (EPI) has about 1,000 fixed centres where more than 1,200 technicians are required to provide immunisation to children against 10 childhood sicknesses including polio. “But mothers are returning without immunisation of their children from those centres,” said officials.

Children in Peshawar, Charsadda, Kohat, Abbottabad and Swabi districts are the worst-affected as health professionals have totally stopped vaccination despite availability of vaccines. In other districts, situation is not that bad and people are getting the vaccination at one or another health facility.

“There are a lot of responsible doctors, technicians and workers too. They are performing their duties as they believe that essential services can’t be denied during strike,” a senior medical officer in Charsadda told Dawn.

He said that they had conducted enhanced outreach activity (EOA) in more than 20 districts recently in smooth manner and case response activities were going on in various districts. The health department is also trying to dissociate its vaccinators from the agitators to resume immunisation at the EPI centres.

The technicians have been told that children’s health shouldn’t be put at risk due to politics. The problem is that essential immunisation is not available at the private hospitals and in some centres the rates are highly expensive and not affordable for common parents.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has recorded 57 of 76 countrywide polio cases so far.

The challenge is posed by the strikers to the next month’s polio vaccination campaign which also includes vitamin-B to protect children against poliomyelitis and measles.

The protesting health employees have already been providing emergency services to critically-ill and injured people but they are denying essential immunisation to children, who cannot speak for their right to health.

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2019