Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani urged the world community on Saturday to help shift the three million Afghan refugees residing in Pakistan back to Afghanistan, to stop illegal cross border movement and prevent spread of the crippling Polio disease.
“They need to go back … the relief centres have to be in Afghanistan,” Gilani told a press conference along with United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
The Australian prime minister had invited a selected group of Heads of States and Governments from the countries where Polio was still prevalent, or who were funding campaigns for the eradication of the crippling disease.
Gilani said the world seemed to have forgotten the plight of millions of Afghans who were living in shanty make-shift homes and camps in Pakistan, years after the withdrawal of the troops of United Soviet Socialist Republic from Afghanistan.
He added it was hard for Pakistan to check the illegal movement across the over 2,000 km long border with Afghanistan and added that he was preventing his country from the disease. He said Pakistan had managed to eliminate the disease, but regretted that it resurfaced in the past seven years with 132 new cases reported. “This situation is totally unacceptable. We have launched a National Emergency Action Plan for Polio eradication and to interrupt transmission of the virus in Pakistan by the end of 2011,” he said.
Gilani attributed the resurfacing of Polio to the ongoing cross-border movement and difficulties in administrating Polio drops to the children living in camps and villages in the inhospitable terrain along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Polio remains endemic in four countries, three of which are members of the Commonwealth – India, Nigeria, and Pakistan, besides Afghanistan.
Gilani also pointed to the influence of the extremist elements in these areas who were preventing administration of the vaccine. He said government of Pakistan was seeking help of the religious scholars to convince the “fanatics” about the importance of vaccine. He said Pakistan was launching a three-day campaign every three months to administer anti-polio drops to 33 million children across the country.
He said the government was committed to the cause and had designated Aseefa Bhutto Zardari as the Goodwill Ambassador, as she was the first child to have received the drops from her mother late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, when the campaign was launched for the first time in Pakistan.
Gilani informed the other leaders that a Polio Monitoring Cell at the PM Secretariat had been set up, with similar setups at provincial, district and local levels, working to mobilise community.
He said it was being done in close coordination with the UNICEF and WHO. “We hope to see positive outcome by December this year,” he said and pointed that the task ahead was daunting. “But we remain determined to eradicate this virus and protect every child in Pakistan from the scourge of Polio,” he added. The Australian government announced a commitment of 50 million Australian dollars to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).
Cameron said Pakistan was the single largest aid recipient of the United Kingdom and the UK government was working closely with it and Afghanistan to stop the terrorists on either side of the Pak-Afghan border.
Pakistan seeks world support to repatriate 3m Afghan refugees
