Over 173 polio cases were officially reported during 2011, and this year in 2012, it is going on with same pace. There are so many factors like widespread corruption on organisational level, poor planning, lack of public awareness campaigns, religious mindset and illiteracy that are responsible for alarming rise in polio cases in Pakistan. I am amazed to know that among all these factors religious mindset is topping the list to hamper polio eradication programme.
We have been fighting the war on terror since 2011, but the terrorist mindset still prevails. Various research groups of epidemiologists believe that religious opposition by Muslim fundamentalists is a major factor in the failure of immunisation programmes against polio in Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. This religious conflict in the tribal areas of Pakistan is one of the biggest hindrances to effective administer polio vaccination.
Epidemiologists have detected transmission of wild poliovirus from polio-endemic districts in Afghanistan, most of which are located in the southern region of this country bordering Pakistan, to tribal areas of Pakistan. This transmission has resulted in new cases of polio in previously polio-free districts. The local Taliban have issued fatwas denouncing vaccination as an American ploy to sterilise Muslim populations. Another common superstition spread by extremists is that vaccination is an attempt to avert the will of Allah.
The Taliban have assassinated vaccination officials, including Abdul Ghani Marwat, who was the head of the government’s vaccination campaign in Bajaur Agency in the Pakistani tribal areas, on his way back from meeting a religious cleric. Over the past year, several kidnappings and beatings of vaccinators have been reported.
DR SAIFUR REHMAN
Islamabad
