Keeping in views the recent attacks on polio workers in Peshawar and other parts of the country, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Friday suspended the three-day anti-polio campaign that was scheduled to start on January 5 in Peshawar and Mardan.
Health department and Extended Program on Immunisation (EPI) officials said the vaccination drive was suspended due to the poor law and order situation in the province. Sources in the health department told Pakistan Today that vaccination workers had refused to take part in the campaign following police department’s refusal to provide complete security.
The workers, said sources, were unwilling to risk their lives for a meager payment of Rs 300 by the government.
EPI Deputy Director Dr Janbaz Khan told Pakistan Today that no date had been announced to restart the campaign but expected the dates would be announced soon. He expected the campaign to be launched on January 14 in 58 sensitive union councils of Peshawar. An official of the district administration told Pakistan Today that the campaign was suspended due to complications caused by restoration of the old local government system. He said the officers had so far not been assigned their due responsibilities through official notifications.
The campaign had already been delayed due to attacks on polio teams in Peshawar, Charsadda and Nowshera when unknown gunmen targeted eight volunteers killing four, including two women on December 25. The series of attacks caused fear among polio workers as they continued receiving threats from unknown persons in Gul Bahar area of the city during campaigns.
Meanwhile, the government has decided to set up a polio control room with the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) to coordinate vaccination activities in the province with the district administrations. The control room has been established on special directives of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Secretary Ghulam Dastagir Khan.
All divisional commissioners would feed information about future anti-polio campaigns and submit progress reports of these drives during the course of their implementation to the chief secretary on a regular basis. An official told Pakistan Today that deputy commissioners of all districts and their assistant commissioners would keep proper liaison with their respective divisional commissioners to collect the required data from their areas and share it with provincial authorities on a daily basis.
The newly established unit would also be responsible to pass on results of post-campaign assessments, performed by partner organisations, including WHO and UNICEF, to the chief secretary and secretary health.
According to district administration, polio drops would be administered to 800,000 children and 18,000 teams have been formed for the door-to-door drive.
reason of polio drops refusal is our wrong policy which is 3 campaign in every month,
we need to do 4 campaign every, and not presurise our health department staff. this way we may beat the reafusal.
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