Misconceptions about polio vaccines damaging anti-polio campaigns

Islamabad: The misconceptions about polio vaccines being promoted generally among less educated section of the society and baseless, fabricated and unjustified material being posted on social media against National Polio Immunization Days are damaging the anti-polio campaigns all across the country.

There are a number of misconceptions about both inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) that is given through injection and oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) including the one that poliovirus vaccine causes male infertility and thus is a conspiracy of the ‘enemy’ (Jews) against Muslims.

One can easily witness a lot of material promoting like misconceptions on social media that can be termed as a subversive plan to destroy part of our new generation that may become victim of the disease and life-time paralysis in case they are not administered anti-polio vaccine in time.

Additional District Health officer at ICT Health Department Dr. Muhammad Najeeb Durrani expressed this while talking to ‘The News’ on Thursday, fourth day of anti-polio campaign being carried out all across the country under National Immunization Days (NID).

He said the teams of health departments carrying out anti-polio drive face ‘chronic’ refusals from a certain class of society that is not willing to get their children below five years of age immunized against polio because of their incorrect opinions based on faulty thinking.

It is a scientific era of research and evidence based planning and accountability is used for making correct decisions, said Dr. Durrani who is an epidemiologist and Member Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network (GOARN).

Talking of another misconception that anti-polio campaigns are run so frequently in Pakistan because of some conspiracy, he said that it is an undeniable fact that polio virus is present and prevailing in three countries of the world including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. “Due to the war and strife situation in these countries especially Afghanistan and some parts of Pakistan including FATA, the disease still prevails.”

He added that if a child gets infected in any part of the world, the research even documents its place of origin that is from which part of the world the virus had come from due to genetic sequencing and laboratory based classification.

He said the strategy of observing National Polio Immunization Days is the only mechanism by which most countries of the world including our neighbours India and Bangladesh have eradicated polio from their region.

He explained that the need for observing repeated supplementary polio immunization days in an area is because of the viral appearance in the sewerage water from that specific area or that city and it is found through environmental sampling that virus is being shed by some infected children passing into sewerage.

There are two diseases that we in Pakistan have got rid of, one is Small pox and that land mark achievement was only possible by mass immunization campaign in seventies while the other vector born parasitic infection was Dracanculous Medinances (Ginny worm disease that was eradicated from the country with WHO certification), said Dr. Durrani while responding to a query.

He added that because of misconceptions being promoted on social media and even in a section of press, the disease is still prevailing in the country since public is misguided and there are constant refusals as public have apprehensions and fears due to such negative statements appearing in some sections of media.He said in this regard, media can play a vital role for stopping such mala fide propaganda and removing baseless misconceptions from among a section of the society.