PESHAWAR, Sept 12: International polio experts have termed refusal by parents to vaccinate their children against polio an unacceptable excuse and said it is a tool to conceal problems in anti-polio campaigns in the Frontier province and parts of Fata.

According to officials associated with anti-polio efforts in the country, members of the International Review Panel from the WHO, Geneva, and Unicef, New York, have communicated this concern to health officials in the NWFP and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

The panel is currently visiting provincial capitals of Balochistan, Sindh and the NWFP as part of evaluation of the status of polio eradication efforts in the country. It includes Jalaa Abdul Wahab and Lilian Boualam from the WHO and Jaffery Bates as an observer from the Unicef headquarters in New York.

During the four-day international communication review for the NWFP, held in Peshawar, the panel members and other observers rejected ‘refusals’ as an acceptable excuse behind the deteriorating quality of polio campaigns in the province.

Officials from Mardan, Charsadda, Swabi, Nowshera, Lakki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan and Bannu districts and Khyber, Mohmand, Bajaur, North Waziristan and South Waziristan agencies gave presentations to the panel members.

According to insiders, more or less every district used the resistance they were facing from parents in allowing vaccination teams to enter their areas as the main reason for their inability to vaccinate hundreds and thousands of children.

Members of the panel also met provincial Health Minister Syed Zahir Ali and conveyed to him their reservations about the slackness on part of the health department regarding anti-polio efforts.

The head of the panel, Jalaa Abdul Wahab, said only six to 10 per cent of the total number of children missed in the province were due to refusals by parents to administer polio vaccine to their children. “There are many other reasons besides refusals that are depriving a large number of children from getting anti-polio drops,” sources quoted him as telling the minister.

According to the panel’s presentation to the minister, children also missed polio vaccination due to the ongoing military operation in different parts of the province, poor follow-up and incorrect marking of children.

The minister also expressed concern over the increasing number of cases of children not being vaccinated in the province. He was quoted by a source as saying: “In future we need to put in place a mechanism where teams performing poorly are punished and teams with better performance are rewarded.