In the wake of the recent polio cases detected in four districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Health Department is planning a special vaccination campaign in the province from August 27. EPI Director Dr Janbaz Afridi told Pakistan Today that around 1.8 million children below the age of five, from 153 union councils, could be vaccinated during the special three-day drive, adding that recently four cases of polio were detected in Peshawar, Charsada, Mardan and Lakki Marwat.
The children to be vaccinated belong to 48 union councils of Peshawar – 18 from Charsada, 33 from Lakki Marwat and 44 from Mardan and in this regard, meetings between senior officials of the Health Department and the civil administration were in progress. A total of 29 polio cases have been detected so far this year throughout the country. Of the 29, 21 cases are reported only in the Federally Administrative Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Giving further details, Dr Afridi said 13 of these cases were from FATA and the remaining eight were from various districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “Whereas in rest of the country, three cases are from Sindh and Punjab each and only two are from Balochistan,” he said. In response to a question, Dr Afridi said so far 16,000 families from various districts of the province had refused to get their children vaccinated, adding that the civil administration had already been directed by the government to take legal action against the elders of such families. He said the government had already evolved Augmented National Emergency Action Plan aimed at interrupting the polio virus circulation in the country by the end of this year. Beside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the situation is alarming in various FATA agencies. Taliban have recently banned polio vaccination in North and South Waziristan agencies depriving more than 200,000 children in these areas of a polio-free life. This is in addition to Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency which has been inaccessible for vaccination teams since September 2009. Ten of the 13 polio cases in FATA this year have been reported from Bara. If the recently imposed ban on polio vaccination is not withdrawn and access in Bara is not gained, the goal of National Emergency Action Plan is at serious risk. The official data revealed that more than 150,000 families from all over Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency have already abandoned homes and are living as internally displaced persons (IDP’s) in Peshawar and its surrounding areas.
