The polio battle

Pakistan’s polio campaign seems to have been going in reverse the past two years. For Pakistan to officially be declared a polio-free country, it would need to go three consecutive years without a single case of polio. There was a glimmer of hope in mid 2018 when from a high of 306 in 2014, confirmed polio cases in Pakistan fell to 12. All that changed in 2019, when Pakistan recorded 147 cases of polio. So here we are: moving backwards in our fight to save our children. After a lapse of many months due to the Covid-19 situation, parts of the country will see a restart of the anti-polio campaigns (with Covid SOPs intact), starting with a seven-day vaccination campaign that aims to vaccinate 34 million children across the country. The Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) for Polio in Sindh has started the province-wide OPV campaign, which will run till August 21, 2020. The campaign will take place in all 29 districts of Sindh with a total target population of 9.26 million children under five years of age. This is just as well since the virus seems to be showing no signs of being eliminated – just last week, the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad confirmed wild poliovirus in a 14-year-old boy who had expired in the Mayo Hospital on July 27, 2020.

It is unfortunate to see the setback to the polio campaign starting 2019, especially since Pakistan was this close to finally getting rid of its polio problem. There are a number of reasons for that. Some still believe the militant propaganda that polio drops will sterilise their children and so do not welcome polio workers in their communities. Then, it has proven difficult to vaccinate children in remote parts of the country. Then there has been a question of government will. Hopefully, we will strive to at least get to the levels we had achieved in 2018, and take the fight right up to eliminating this deadly virus. Should we manage to do so, the tens of thousands of polio workers who have made this possible should be lauded for their bravery and selflessness.

A report by the Independent Monitoring Board of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative at the beginning of this year had pointed out that there is a lack of coordination between different agencies and that polio has now expanded outside its core reservoirs. The IMB also stressed the need for Afghanistan and Pakistan to work together, given the issue of cross-border transmission. Pakistan has in the past blamed Afghanistan for polio cases in its territory. But a disease should not become a game of political upmanship. Both within the country and in the region health teams must work together if polio is to be ever successfully wiped out and the gains seen till 2018 built on.