Two new polio cases in Peshawar, Bara

PESHAWAR: The National Institute of Health, Islamabad, has confirmed two new polio cases, one each from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, bringing the nationwide tally to 104 this year so far. Officials said that refusals against oral polio vaccine (OPV) by parents had been a chronic problem as in both the new cases the affected children had not been vaccinated. They said that one-year-old Salma Bibi, daughter of Iqbal Khan, residing in Nasab Colony on Charsadda Road, Peshawar, had not received even a single dose of the OPV. “She has not been administered OPV throughout Sehat ka Insaf programme because of her mother’s unwillingness,” the officials said. According to them, her mother didn't open the door for vaccinators as per her husband's instructions due to which her daughter got crippled. Same is the case of Hafsa, daughter of Khan Jamal, who remained unvaccinated due to her parents’ defiance to let OPV administered to their child. The eight-month-old girl child lives in Milward area of Bara tehsil, Khyber Agency, where bulk of the people are under misconception that vaccination was forbidden in Islam, the sources said. In both cases, the children have not received even a single dose of OPV The officials said that in half of the 18 cases recorded by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the children hadn’t received any dose of OPV due to their parents’ refusal. They said that the vaccinators recorded about 50,000 refusals, bulk of which came from Bannu which had nine cases in 2014 so far. The number of refusals against OPV is over 6,000 in Mardan, which has one case this year, according to officials associated with the vaccination campaign. Peshawar with seven cases in 2014 is also faced with serious problem of refusals. There are over 7,000 refusals in Peshawar which has been the main hindrance in the way of polio eradication, the officials said. The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-led government ran Sehat Ka Insaf programme in February this year under which over 800,000 children in the district were administered vaccines 12 times on weekly basis. Later, the programme was extended to Charsadda, Mardan and Swabi to protect children against vaccine-preventable crippling childhood ailments, including polio. However, relevant officials say that there is no chance of eradicating polio in the province as long as the refusals exist. Lakki Marwat has one case this year, but there are 5,000 refusals, the officials said. The children missed in every campaign also pose a serious threat to the government’s efforts to do away with the disease. Despite the health department’s efforts to vaccinate five million children the number of refusals and missed children are the chronic issues to be addressed as soon as possible if the province is to be purged of polio, they said. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has also been at the receiving end of the polio transmission from Fata, which has recorded 76 cases this year. They include 57 cases from North Waziristan Agency, 10 Khyber Agency, seven South Waziristan Agency and two from Frontier Region, Bannu. With the displacement of people from North Waziristan where children have not been vaccinated since June 2012 due to Taliban’s ban on vaccination, the situation has aggravated because all those unvaccinated children now live in Bannu and other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Published in Dawn, Aug 2nd , 2014