Militants hampering anti-polio drive as new case confirmed

 A seven-month-old baby girl, Tanzeela, has become the 16th polio case to be detected this year in Pakistan.

The child, from the Kabal area of Swat Valley, some 170km northeast of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), had not received any drops of the polio vaccine.

"A polio virus case has been found in Kabal," Waheed Khan, deputy director of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation, confirmed on 17 July.

Health officials in the area say campaigns against vaccination teams by militants, and clashes between them and troops, have prevented some 50,000 of the Swat Valley’s 365,000 children under five from being vaccinated.

Saeed Akbar Khan, a World Health Organization (WHO) operations officer in Peshawar, told IRIN: "Despite the challenges we are committed to eradicating polio."

Pakistan, according to the WHO-supported Global Polio Eradication Initiative, is one of only four countries in the world that remain polio endemic. The others are Nigeria, India and Afghanistan.

Sixteen cases of polio have been confirmed over the past seven months in Pakistan. This compares with nine during the same period last year.

Propaganda

A key concern for health officials is that a number of the cases have been caused by the refusal of parents to allow children to be immunised, usually as a result of propaganda by extremists.

Photo: Kamila Hyat/IRIN

Militants disseminate propaganda that polio drops could render "children sterile for life"

In the past, broadcasts over illegal radio stations run by militants have warned that polio drops could render "children sterile for life".

At least two children found infected by the polio virus in Balochistan, as well as the latest case in Swat, seem to have been afflicted as a direct consequence of their parents’ refusal to allow drops to be administered.

In April this year, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that an estimated 160,000 children in Swat Valley could be missed out during the polio vaccination drive. Accords reached between the provincial government and the militants, which allowed polio teams back into Swat a few weeks ago, brought hope that the drive could resume in the area.

Vaccinators kidnapped

However, a renewal of fighting has ended that optimism and polio teams have again left the area.

A new wave of conflict is also creating problems for vaccinators in other parts of the NWFP: Militants appear to have begun a new, aggressive campaign, which is also directed against anti-polio teams, and there are thus fears that more children will fall victim to the disease due to the refusal of parents to allow them to be vaccinated.

The scale of the threat was highlighted by an incident near Mohmand Agency on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, when four vaccinators were kidnapped as they were returning to Peshawar. Efforts to recover them continue.

Comments by men like Qari Shakeel, deputy head of the Taliban in Mohmand - who told IRIN "members of these teams are trying to distance our children from their religion" - give an insight into attitudes.

kh/at/cb