PESHAWAR, Jan 5: In a bid to protect health workers against militant attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the provincial government has decided not to publicise the schedule of the future polio vaccination campaigns.

The decision was made during a meeting chaired by provincial health secretary Mohammad Ishfaq Khan here after the postponement of a three-day anti-polio campaign slated to begin in the day.

Representatives of the health department and the district administrations were in attendance.

The sources privy to the meeting told Dawn that there would be no proper announcement of the immunisation schedule in future as the provincial government didn’t want to put the lives of health workers carry out the exercise at risk.

They said the vaccination campaign had been put off until an unspecified period.

The sources said the campaign targeting around two million children under five in high-risk districts of Peshawar, Nowshera, Charsadda and Mardan could face serious, irreversible problems.

They said the assassination of three vaccinators in the last polio campaign had terrified lady health workers and volunteers so much that they were no more willing to be part of the polio campaigns.

“In such situation, we will bank on the support of around 1,000 vaccinators in the designated districts. A strategy for giving foolproof security to vaccinators before the launch of the campaign will be finalised,” an official said.

The sources said the health department wanted to adopt a cautious approach to vaccinate children to fulfill its international commitment of doing away with the highly-infectious crippling disease.

They said the department on its part was grappling with the daunting task of immunising children as the province had recorded 27 cases, the highest in the country, in 2012 against the nationwide tally of 58.

“The dramatic onslaught against health workers continues. The recent killing of aid workers in Swabi and Charsadda suggests that the go ahead with the scheduled vaccination drives means risking the life of health workers,” an official said.

He claimed that polio would be eradicated from the province in 2013 because more focus would be laid on the high-risk union councils in the districts that had recorded the most cases.

The sources said the provincial health secretary voiced annoyance at the ‘leakage of vaccination news’ to the media and asked the relevant authorities to postpone the vaccination campaign until a workable mechanism was put in place for the protection of vaccinators against militant attacks.

They said the health department had so far failed to vaccinate more than two million children who remained unimmunised due to the postponement of the polio campaign over the killing of health workers.

The sources said the health department had announced that the unvaccinated children would get oral polio vaccine from Dec 28 but lack of security measures and fear among health workers blocked action on the announcement.

An official said there was a need for a full-scale campaign to vaccinate more than 95 per cent children in Peshawar due to presence of poliovirus in sewage water.

He said the provincial capital was home to migrant population, mainly from Khyber Agency, which recorded 11 of the 20 cases detected in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas last year.

The official said the 2013 strategy would focus on Peshawar as it recorded six polio cases, the biggest number in the 28 infected districts in the province, last year. He added that the provincial capital was responsible for transportation of poliovirus to other districts.