Man arrested over refusing polio vaccine for niece

Karachi
In the first case of its kind in Karachi, police arrested a man from the Gulbahar locality of Liaquatabad and registered a case against him after he refused to get his niece vaccinated against polio during a special three-day drive launched in seven high-risk union councils (UCs) on Wednesday.
Muhammad Zahid refused to get his niece vaccinated against polio when Deputy Commissioner (Central) Dr Saif-ur-Rehman visited his house with vaccinators and asked him to get the children in the house administered oral polio vaccine (OPV) drops. “I asked him (Zahid) to allow the baby to get vaccinated against polio, but he refused,” said Rehman. “I spent 40 minutes trying to persuade him, but he kept refusing.”
He said he directed the Gulbahar police to arrest the man and book him under relevant laws of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). “I told the man that the ulema of all the sects, doctors and experts were in favour of administering OPV drops to children, but he said he would not allow the child to be vaccinated. I even told him that my own children were administered OPV drops, but he turned a deaf ear to all my arguments.”

A good example
Rehman said that after the man was arrested, no one else in the locality dared to refuse getting their children vaccinated, adding that some people themselves approached the vaccinators.
Liaquatabad SP Tahir Noorani, who accompanied the deputy commissioner and other officials during the vaccination campaign, confirmed that Gulbahar police officials had arrested Zahid and booked him under Section 186 of the PPC, which “deals with obstructing a public servant in discharging public service”.
Noorani said the offence was punishable, and the person found guilty could be put behind bars for three months as well as fined.

High refusals
The vaccination drive in seven high-risk UCs commenced amid tight security arrangements, but the vaccinators faced difficulties in administering OPV drops to children as many parents reused to get their children vaccinated.
Officials of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation said the number of refusals in high-risk UCs was extremely high, while there were also threats of attacks among other security concerns, which was why the UCs had been marked as high-risk and separate drives were conducted there.