While Pakistan has done well in carrying out a more effective polio vaccine campaign during the previous year, with only eight cases of polio reported in 2021, compared to a far higher number in 2019 and previous years, the executive director of Unicef says that there are still far too many children in the country who do not receive the vaccines that should be delivered to them during their primary years. The executive director noted that there were 1.3 million children in the country who had not received their full doses of vaccine against childhood diseases, and 350,000 who had not received any vaccine at all. This is a dangerous situation, given that Pakistan has the highest infant and child mortality death rate in South Asia and one which is amongst the highest in the world. One of the reasons for this is our failure to eliminate common childhood diseases, which can be fatal.
This situation needs to be checked – immediately and effectively. Awareness has to be created about the necessity of getting children vaccinated against all childhood diseases as per the expanded programme on immunisation launched in the country many years ago. Even this programme needs to be expanded further to cover diseases which are currently not on the list, but for which vaccines are now commonplace. No child should have to suffer a disease when its vaccine exists.
We hope that Unicef’s warning will be taken seriously. Pakistan has a duty to protect all its children and by protecting them build a healthier, stronger population. This after all is the primary foundation on which a country is based. The controversies over vaccines that have occurred over the years have damaged children in Pakistan and in every province of the country. This needs to be stopped. We need to understand why there have been lapses in delivering vaccines and consider if more effective mechanisms can be found such as vaccinating children in schools. The only problem is that we still have a large number of – about 20 million – children out of school. The number has grown since then. Pakistan has many challenges to overcome if it is to ensure vaccines are delivered to every child, every time, no matter where he or she lives. It is also important that the entire regimen of vaccination be completed and all doses received by children so that they are protected from diseases which still kill far too many young children in our country.