THIS is about the ban on Pakistani travellers in view of endemicity of polio. According to information available, more than 400,000 Pakistanis travel abroad every year. It seems to me that to have the target of so-called polio eradication achieved, the World Health Organisation has gone out of the way to impose restrictions on us.

Ninety per cent of polio cases are sub-clinical. It is not understood on what scientific basis it has been assumed that the reservoir of infection has been eliminated from the world and we are the only culprits along with Nigeria.

When my last letter on the prevalence of polio was published on Feb 25, 2012, I stated that the routine immunisation programme as part of the national strategy was good enough and we did not have to resort to so many NIDs.

There was a point about vaccine-associated paralysis but the emphasis was on focusing on weaker areas and targeting vulnerable groups. Unfortunately due to political turmoil and the involvement of a doctor in the Osama affair, we lost time and reached a stage when innocent men and women working for controlling polio have been killed. This situation does not appear to be of any concern to any world body.

For adults OPV is not the best course open. Many of us who had polio immunisation during the last many years should have only one dose of IPV. The effect is normally valid for five years.

It is regrettable that despite some able and eminent persons being part of a committee, the ministry of health at the federal level was dissolved, while the provinces, which were always independent to develop and expand their health facilities, disregarded.

First, we heard of the ministry of standards and services but now it is the ministry of national health services. Certainly this does not appear to be the same organisation it used to be. In order to have global partnership for controlling any disease phenomenon, there is a need to re-establish the former ministry of health.

Prof Khalid Hassan Mahmood

Karachi