KHAR (Bajaur Agency), Nov 1: The authorities here claim to have brought down the number of people opposing polio vaccination with the help of the local Taliban.

Officials said that more than 4,500 children under five years of age had been missed in the polio vaccination campaign in August.

They said that health officials had reached an agreement with Taliban leader Maulana Faqir Mohammad and local clerics who were against the administration of oral polio drops to their offspring.

Polio teams faced a lot of prolems in Bajaur Agency where clerics through loudspeakers and FM radios warned the people against vaccination.

They asked the people not

to get their children vacci-

nated because it had been launched at the behest of the US and western countries in order to reduce the population of Muslims.

Early this year, an agency surgeon and his assistants were killed in a bomb blast in Bajaur. They were returning from a meeting held to promote polio drive.

Around 3,000 children were missed in the Barang village alone in last polio drive. The officials said that after a jirga with Maulvi Abdul Hassan on Wednesday, 100 per cent children had been covered in the village. A 35-member jirga was constituted to convince parents in the village.

The health officials said that parents of only 875 children had refused vaccination in the three-day campaign started on Oct 30.

They said Maulana Abdul Aziz of the governor’s peace jirga held a meeting with the health officials in Mamoond tehsil to discuss ways to accelerate the pace of polio campaign.