New challenge as polio virus starts crippling vaccinated children

Experts fear the emergence of a new case in Karachi would make it difficult to convince parents to get children vaccinated

Karachi  

“Look at him. Who would call him a weak child? Our child has always been fed well and he seldom fell ill since his birth. Whenever polio teams visited our house, we let them administer polio drops to our child, but still he got crippled, why? ” questions Sher Ali Khan, resident of the Gadap Town and father of 34-month old Aijaz Khan, who has been confirmed as the first child affected by the polio virus this year in entire Pakistan.

Refusals to get children vaccinated against polio may increase manifolds in the coming months, especially in the Pashto-speaking areas of the country, after health authorities in Karachi confirmed that the 34-month old child, hailing from a Pashtun family in Karachi, had been crippled by the polio virus despite having at least seven doses of the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) during successive special vaccination drives held in the city.

Father and grandfather of the ill-fated Aijaz Khan are not satisfied with the justifications being given to them by the health experts and the Karachi administration, who told them that their child was among the weakest children in the area; therefore having low immunity against the virus.

“They (doctors) call Aijaz a weak child, which is absolutely wrong. He is healthy and double in weight of many children of his age group. We took him to the EPI Centre for routine immunisation, where an injection caused him the misery, and now are being told that he has been affected by the polio for being a weak child, which is quite puzzling”, said Sher Ali Khan, who belongs to the Mohmand Agency, a district in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

The emergence of the new polio case – with the fact that the affected child had been administered several OPV doses during special vaccination drives- has created a new challenge for the polio eradication authorities in Karachi, who are already struggling to improve security for polio vaccinators, while there are still hundreds of parents who refuse to get their children vaccinated because of the misconceptions attached to the polio vaccine.

The challenge has surfaced during a time when polio eradication officials were planning to conduct a round of the Injectable Polio Vaccine in certain areas of Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar by the end of March 2016 so that immunity and defence of children with health and nutrition problems could be boosted against the virus.

A welcoming sign?   

On the other side, the leader of the polio eradication initiative in Sindh claims that the emergence of the new case is a “welcoming sign” for the authorities, as it shows that their efforts are getting fruitful and Pakistan is on the right path of eradicating polio from its soil.

“Experiences from other countries of the world, which have gotten rid of polio, indicate that when polio virus doesn’t find an unvaccinated child in an area, it attacks the weakest one. This shows we have entered the decisive phase of war against polio”, Usman Chachar, Coordinator for Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Sindh for Polio, tells The News.

Chachar said it was a proven fact that when polio virus didn’t get any unvaccinated child, it attacked the weakest child with compromised immunity and in this case, the polio virus attacked the child in UC-7 of the Gadap Town and crippled him.

“The Technical Advisory Group (TAG) comprising international experts in its meeting in Islamabad, this year in January, also acknowledged our efforts against polio and maintained that Pakistan could now eradicate polio for once and all, only if not a single child was missed getting polio vaccine drops”, he added.

Experts also fear that parents may start refusing to let their children administered, which could increase numbers of missing children during the drives, if more such children, who would have been given polio vaccine, were reported affected by the virus in Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta.

“We fear that in the coming days, more children who would have received several polio doses, would emerge as polio positive cases as the same was happened in India and Bangladesh when they were about to eradicate polio from their soils”, said Dr Rana Muhammad Safdar, the national coordinator for polio eradication in Pakistan.

Children living in slums like Gadap area are highly vulnerable due to malnourishment, frequent chest and abdominal infections and humid climate of the city, Safdar claims, adding that such children require more than 10 doses of polio vaccination to boost their immunity to a level where they could not be affected by the virus.

“In this scenario, our message to parents is to get their children vaccinated whenever a team visits their house or whenever, they get a chance to get their children have polio drops,” Safdar urged.  

Even the prime minister’s special assistant on polio eradication, Shahnaz Wazir Ali, considers it as a new challenge, saying although it is proven that malnourished children, those having frequently diarrhea or those who are anemic, could become victim of polio virus, but it would be hard to convince parents and uneducated people, who already have several misconceptions about the polio vaccine.

“It is the responsibility of our media to educate people about getting their children vaccinated, otherwise the virus would keep on crippling children with low immunity”, she observed.