CHECKOUT THE NEW PAKISTAN STRATEGY ON HEALTH ISSUES

The country has been urged to revisit the Global Polio
Eradication Initiative (GPEI) to identify gaps. A striking
observation is the number of children still missed during
immunization rounds.
“The Polio Program’s performance in the last three seasons
(covering 15 immunization rounds) is revealing,” the report
said.
“In Pakistan, even after attempts to go back to communities
to find the children who had been missed, the approximate
numbers unvaccinated were: 767,000 (low season 2016);
760,000 (high season 2016); 858,000 (low season 2017).”
Karachi
Health Department officials say the metropolitan city of
Karachi is in the most vulnerable situation when it comes to
polio proliferation.
Dr. Fazlullah Pechuho, secretary of the Health Department in
Sindh province, said the department is aware of the
emergency.
“Every month, 5,000 people come to Karachi from different
parts of the country and from Afghanistan. They’re a guest
population. We don’t know whether their children are properly
immunized or not,” he told Arab News.
“In Karachi alone, there are 50,000 missing children, which
means we have no trace of their immunization.”
Pechuho said no one should be allowed to enter the city
unless they are immunized. “People have to take responsibility
for their children. Parents should be penalized for refusing
immunization. Their ID cards should be blocked.”
An official who has been working with the polio team in
Pakistan since 1999, and who supervises a team of 80
workers in Karachi, told Arab News on condition of anonymity:
“We haven’t been able to track children who are carrying the
polio virus. It’s a moving population from the tribal belt of
Pakistan that comes to Karachi during winters and goes back
during summers.”
Ground support
“Workers fighting the virus have no support on the ground,”
the official said. “They’re not respected in society. People
don’t let them vaccinate. They face death threats and are paid
a pittance, without food and transport.”
He added: “I see well-paid officers who sit in air-conditioned
rooms, but those who are fighting on the ground have nothing.
We’re warriors with empty hands.”
He continued: “If we make polio vaccination certificates
compulsory for all education admissions, and even for
passports and national ID cards, people will start taking the
campaign seriously. The government has to make stringent
laws.”
Lack of awareness
Health worker Sajida Kazi said the major challenge in
eradicating polio in Pakistan is lack of awareness.
Those who refuse vaccination for their children “believe it’s a
conspiracy hatched by our enemies to destroy us. They also
make it a religious issue, that the medicine has ingredients
that are un-Islamic,” Kazi told Arab News. “We need support
from our religious scholars and national heroes to create
awareness.”
But Christopher Maher, manager of polio eradication and
emergency support at the World Health Organization (WHO),
said the IMB report shows a decline in the estimated number
of missed children.
“It’s worth noting that the number of children still missed in
each round (of vaccination) comes to less than 3 percent of
the estimated target population of children under five years of
age for the country,” he said.
Global initiative
The GPEI, a public-private partnership, was launched in 1988,
and has invested more than $14 billion via the WHO and
UNICEF to support polio eradication activities in more than 70
countries.

In 2011, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin
Zayed, in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, announced a partnership that made a combined
donation of $100 million to buy and deliver vaccines to
children in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In 2013, the UAE hosted the inaugural Global Vaccine Summit
in Abu Dhabi, where Sheikh Mohammed committed another
$120 million between 2013 and 2018 to fight the disease.