Polio danger

As successful as Pakistan’s polio vaccination campaign has been – there has been a 97 percent drop in the number of polio cases since the high of 2014 – we were served another unsettling reminder of how much remains to be done on Thursday after a mother and daughter who were administering polio drops to children were shot dead in Quetta. No one has claimed responsibility yet but given how many times militant groups have targeted polio workers in the past it is fair to say that one of the many such groups operating in the city was behind the attack. Balochistan is currently in the middle of its first polio vaccination drive of the year after seven such drives in 2017 failed to make the province polio-free. Three new polio cases were confirmed in Balochistan last year. It is estimated that up to 80 percent of our children have now been vaccinated against polio but the number needs to rise to at least 85 percent for herd immunity to kick in. Reaching that number is proving difficult because the holdouts are either located in remote parts of the country, are in the middle of virtual war zones or constantly on the move. Add to that the constant threat of militant attacks and there is a real danger that the polio virus will persist for the foreseeable future.

This attack, as well as the host of recent attacks in Balochistan, should show that we cannot afford complacency in the fight against militancy. The Quetta Inquiry Commission report had in 2016 pointed out the many ways in which we have failed to implement the National Action Plan. Not one of those issues has seen any real improvements. More than 50 polio workers have been killed in the last five years. These attacks can be directly linked to our failures in the war against militancy. Polio vaccinations had first became controversial when Mullah Fazlullah and others used their illegal FM stations to denounce the immunisation campaign as a Western conspiracy. Attacks have been most frequent in Balochistan, Fata and Karachi all of which are areas where militant groups have been allowed to function until very recently. The war against polio and the war against militancy are inextricably linked and the only way to win one is by winning the other.