PESHAWAR, Dec 12: Health officials have expressed concern over the role of World Health Organization (WHO) in Fata, saying that the world health agency was providing huge funds to the people involved in monitoring and supervision while the money spent on the improvement of services was negligible.

"So far only two cases of polio have been detected in Fata, one each in North Waziristan and Khyber Agency, which the WHO say was a success, arguing that the number of cases was more than a dozen last year," said an official of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI).

He said the number of cases might be higher as it was difficult to reach the far-flung areas and examine children there due to lack of staff and vehicles. The official said a complaint was registered at a meeting held recently between the WHO and health officials in Peshawar.

The WHO, which started the Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) programme in NWFP/Fata in 1994, with a view to providing technical and financial support to the health department to do away with the paralysing ailment of polio, is facing an uphill task due to lack of coordination among the WHO and the department concerned.

The EPI has 341 staff members for Fata spread over 27,220 square-kilometres, which is too difficult to reach all the children below five years of age. "We have infrastructure, but need finances as the NWFP/Fata had more than 1,000 EPI's workers, but lack of transportation and other facilities to reach the children in remotest regions has been posing obstacles in accomplishing the task," he added.

The WHO/EPI have been conducting a total of eight rounds of immunisation annually in the Frontier and adjacent tribal belt. The official said the WHO spent Rs53 million on each round, of which 80 per cent went to human resource (team and supervisors), 18 per cent to transportation and fuel cost, and two per cent spent on miscellaneous.

Not this, but the WHO was spending 65 per cent of its budget on polio eradication campaign in Pakistan, the official said. "The number of vaccination teams and supervisors is almost half of the required number in Fata," official said, citing a WHO's letter sent to NWFP Governor Iftikhar Hussain Shah last year, wherein it had expressed concern over the poor polio campaign in Fata.

A technician said that one out of four children were missed in each of the round in Fata and the children on an average received less than half the number of polio vaccine doses as compared to the other districts of the NWFP.

A doctor working in Fata said that several children who appeared to be suffering from polio were not reported to the surveillance system, due to lack of resources.

Officials said the Rs120 given to the workers per day during immunisation campaigns were insufficient for hiring vehicles in Fata, while the people hired by the WHO were paid handsome amount for doing nothing. The WHO has the services of 56 staffers; most of them were paid in dollars, while huge amount went to the maintenance of 24 vehicles.