Pakistanis to face travel restrictions if polio not eliminated by 2013

Pakistanis may face travel restrictions if the country fails to eliminate polio by 2013.
This was revealed in a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Senate for Inter-Provincial Coordination held on Friday under the chairmanship of Senator Farrukh Aqil.
A member of the Committee Dr Karim Ahmad Khawaja said that billions of rupees were being spent on the publicity of polio immunisation campaign and if the target of elimination of polio from the country was not achieved, it would lead to restrictions on the travelling abroad of Pakistanis. The committee sought details of the distribution of global funds among the provinces. The secretary inter-provincial coordination told the meeting that the country received $500 million through global funds last year and $900 million are expected during the current year. After learning this, the committee asked for details about the system under which the funds are given to the provinces.
It seems that Pakistanis might have to live with these travel restrictions, much like the children of Pakistan are living with this disease as the country doesn’t look anywhere close to eradicating polio by 2013. The fight against the crippling ailment has been a difficult one for Pakistan in many ways. While it was close to eliminating the disease at the turn of the century, it didn’t succeed due to a host of reasons which include being pressed for resources, inadequate health machinery, retrogressive social customs and the rising tide of obscurantism. Even though the re-emergence of polio had always been a cause for concerns in recent years, alarm bells started reaching a fever pitch last year when there was a spike in the number of cases in the last year (198 in 2011 – the highest number in the world – as compared to 144 in 2010). Thus, the government reinvigorated its drive against polio at the beginning of 2012. It announced its National Augmented Emergency Action Plan in January 2012 and tried to expand the outreach as well as crank up the publicity and advertisement. High profile ambassadors like Aseefa Bhutto and Shahid Afridi have been taken on in visible efforts to fight the spread of the disease. Not just the federal machinery but the provincial governments have also been active in the fight.
But these efforts might yet take a serious hit given certain recent events. The Taliban have announced that no immunisation campaign will be allowed to be held unless the NATO supply routes are blocked. This announcement has troublingly been backed by tribal jirgas that have set the halting of drone attacks as a pre-requisite to let these immunisation drives take place. While extreme elements had always been opposed to these immunisation campaigns calling them un-Islamic or Western conspiracies, the Shakil Afridi episode has not helped matters and has just given grist to these extremist mills. This does not bode well for combating the disease in the country in general and FATA and the adjacent areas in particular as they are the worst hit areas and lie at the heart of the fight against polio. Only last month, 160,000 children were denied vaccines in North Waziristan alone. And it is expected that 350,000 children around the country will suffer the same deprivation.