SIX cases in six months. The tally for the entire last year equalled in half the time. Pakistan’s efforts towards eradicating, or even containing, the polio virus seem to be failing. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met American philanthropist Bill Gates, whose foundation has long funded the country’s campaign to combat polio, just a day before the sixth confirmed case of the year was officially reported. It is unlikely that their interaction would have been an entirely pleasant one. Huge sums of money have been poured into eradicating polio from the country by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, yet after a period where we seemed set to achieve the ‘polio-free’ distinction, the country now seems to have hit reverse gear. The donors will not be happy. It seems worthwhile to mention here that Pakistan is ‘half’ of the world’s polio problem: it is the only country, apart from war-ravaged Afghanistan, where the wild poliovirus continues to circulate. It is well known what the cause behind Pakistan’s persistent failure to eradicate the disease is, yet the government and the authorities remain unable to ensure compliance from vaccine-rejecting segments of the population.

Somewhere, somehow, the authorities will have to put their foot down. It is unacceptable that the number of children being disabled by an entirely preventable disease continues to rise while the government fails to rein in or penalise elements spreading spurious rumours and encouraging vaccine rejection. There is, of course, an ethical reason why no one should be forced to take medication. At the same time, there are also good ethical reasons to start formally penalising anyone who refuses to either take the anti-polio vaccine or administer it to their children, including officially sanctioning their movement, which would limit the possibility of the virus spreading in previously cleared places, and placing social checks on them, so that others can be made aware of the risk the unvaccinated pose to larger society. Secondly, the government must put an immediate end to the targeting of polio workers, who already risk much to do an immense public service. No polio worker should have to worry about losing life or limb as they work to protect the children of this country. The government needs to demonstrate much more resolve for eradicating polio than it has been lately. Time is of the essence.

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2024