‘7,465 children deprived of polio immunity by parents’

Karachi
Around 7,465 children in Sindh could not be administered polio drops during the recently concluded vaccination drive as their parents’ refused to have them vaccinated, the provincial health minister disclosed on Friday.
Declaring the drive a ‘success’, Jam Mehtab Hussain Dahar claimed that, initially, the number of parents refusing to get their children vaccinated was 16,000, but health officials managed to convince almost half of them.
However, independent monitors claimed the number of refusal cases was much higher than being reported by the authorities.
“Vaccinators were also not reaching out to the number of children they claim they are. The district and town level officials provide inflated data to their higher-ups to save their skin,” an official associated with the polio eradication drive said, requesting anonymity.
He further claimed that monitoring of the vaccination drive was also extremely poor and there were serious operational issues as well.
The health minister, meanwhile, said the next phase of the drive was scheduled to start from October 28 till October 31 in five towns of Karachi which included Gulberg, Liaquatabad, North Karachi, Gulshan-e-Iqbal and Gadap, whereas 22 union councils would be covered.
He claimed that efforts to convince patients to not refuse vaccination to their children were being carried out with the help of the civil society.
Following a six-month travel ban on Pakistanis in 2014, by the World Health Organisation (WHO), for being one of the three countries posing the greatest risk of exportation of wild poliovirus, efforts to eradicate polio vaccination intensified.
Previously deprived of vaccinations due to unscheduled halts in drive due to attacks on vaccinators, children were still being denied the vaccine by parents on religious or other grounds.