Despite the government’s tall claims, eradication of polio from the country seems a distant dream, as Pakistan’s efforts for elimination of the virus have been seriously hampered, mainly because of inaccessibility to over 600,000 children in FATA as well as in cities like Karachi and Peshawar due to precarious security situation.
Minister for National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination Saira Afzal Tarar informed the National Assembly in her written reply that although Pakistan has made significant progress towards interruption of polio virus during last 20 months, yet the country has not been able to get rid of polio as yet.
A country is declared to be polio free only if during one whole year, neither is any case of wild polio virus reported, nor any virus isolated from environmental samples is collected from sewerage.
However, in Pakistan, the polio eradication efforts have suffered setback after the authorities confirmed that three new cases have been reported in Peshawar and one in North Waziristan, while two new cases from separate districts of Sindh.
With these new cases, the toll has mounted to 162 in FATA and 54 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), taking the tally to 257 across the country this year. Tarar said that Pakistan had made tremendous progress on this front i.e. no polio types 2 and 3 have been isolated since 1999 and 2012 respectively.
Moreover, she said that the number of polio cases (WPV1) has also decreased significantly from over 20,000 per year in 1980s to only 15 so far in 2016.
Nevertheless, Tarar accepted that Pakistan’s efforts for ‘zero polio’ have been seriously hampered in the past because of inaccessibility to over 600,000 children in FATA as well as mega cities like Karachi and Peshawar due to militancy and the prevalent environment of insecurity including direct attacks on our polio workers — a trend that started emerging from December 2012.
The minister said that since the launch of operation Zarb-e-Azb and through effective coordination and support of our security agencies, the problem has now been resolved to a great extent.
Resultantly, she maintained that after a huge upsurge of cases in 2014 (306), the programme was able to reduce the number of reported cases to 54 in 2015 (82 per cent decline).
The momentum is being sustained in 2016 where 15 cases have been reported from across Pakistan till date against 39 cases reported during the same time period in 2015, she maintained.
“Similarly, the proportion of positive environmental samples has also decreased from 38 per cent in 2014 to 19 per cent in 2015 and 9 per cent in 2016 so far,” the minister added.
Tarar said that the progress made by Pakistan under difficult circumstances is being widely appreciated at national and international forums including World Health Assembly, Independent Monitoring Board and Polio Oversight Board etc.
The virus has now been confined to small geographical areas in the last reservoirs of Karachi, Khyber-Peshawar and Quetta block. Continued and concerted national efforts are however, required to interrupt the polio virus transmission within next few months by implementing National Emergency Action Plan 2016-17 approved by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, she added.
However, the minister said that personal leadership and support of all respected members would be imperative to support the polio eradication efforts in their respective constituencies during monthly campaigns from now till May 2017.
