Health workers kick off polio drive despite snow in AJK

SURGAN, Pakistan: Health workers are braving freezing temperatures this week to administer polio vaccinations in Azad Kashmir after cases surged nationwide last year.

Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan are the only countries where polio is endemic, and militants have for decades targeted vaccination teams and their security escorts.

A police officer guarding polio vaccinators in the northwest was shot dead by militants on Monday, the first day of the annual campaign that is due to last a week.

In Azad Kashmir, health worker Manzoor Ahmad trudged up snowy mountains as temperatures dipped to minus six degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) to administer polio vaccinations in the region. “It is a mountainous, hard area... we arrive here for polio vaccination despite the three feet of snowfall,” Ahmad, who heads the polio campaign in Azad Kashmir, told AFP.

Social worker Mehnaz, who goes by one name and has been helping the vaccinators since 2018, said the difficult climate poses a huge risk to the vaccination teams. “We have no monthly salary... we come here to give polio shots to the children despite the glaciers and avalanches,” she told AFP. “We risk our lives and leave our children at home.”

The challenge is larger this year for the country with a population of 240 million, after it recorded at least 73 polio cases in 2024 -- a sharp increase from just six cases the year before.

Health workers aim to vaccinate approximately 1,700 children within a week in the town of Surgan, around 150 kilometres north of Muzaffarabad.

“Our target is to give polio shots to 750,000 children below the age of five. There are 4,000 polio teams that visit house-to-house,” Ahmad said. “There have been no polio cases in Kashmir for the last 24 years,” he added with pride.

Polio can easily be prevented by an oral vaccine, but in the past some religious leaders have falsely claimed that the vaccine contains pork or alcohol, declaring it forbidden for Muslims to consume.