hands even with the PML-N for the sake of the future generations of the country,” the PTI leader observed.Later in the day, Health Minister Shahram Khan, while addressing a press conference at the Health Department, said the campaign would start from the first week of February and conclude in the first week of May.
The campaign would cover a number of districts, including five in southern parts of the province sited on the boundary with North Waziristan, South Waziristan, Khyber Agency and Frontier Region Bannu.
It would also enable the health workers to reach out to children in North Waziristan and South Waziristan, where local Taliban had banned polio vacation campaign for quite a long time as a mark of protest over US drone attacks. The Taliban used to claim that innocent people, including women and children, were being killed in the drone strikes. However, they had failed to provide proof to back up their claims.
The ban, however, deprived thousands of innocent children of polio drops and left dozens of children ?physically handicapped forever.It would, however, be a difficult task for the government to reach all the children displaced from South Waziristan, North Waziristan and Khyber tribal regions ?due to the military operation in these areas.
Also, though Governor Mehtab Ahmad Khan and Corps Commander Lt Gen Hidayat-ur-Rahman pledged to make the drive a success, it would be difficult for health workers to trace children in the remote areas of Fata due to security constraints and weather conditions.“In the first phase, 300 health units would vaccinate 3,300,000 children,” Shahram Khan said.
Responding to a question regarding funding for the “Sehat ka Ittehad” campaign, the health minister said that they would request the UN organisations including the Unicef and WHO to provide them hygiene kits and material for comprehensive communication strategy for the drive.
Also, they did not disclose the cost of the campaign. Besides other challenges, the government would need to show sincerity in its efforts against polio eradication and hold accountable those spending millions of dollars of foreign donors for their failures.