PESHAWAR: Unvaccinated children are hampering the government’s progress in the fight against polio in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, health officials insist.

They said Dawn that during the last door-to-door anti-polio campaign from October 28 to November 3, vaccinators missed only 1.5 percent of targeted children in the province due to parental refusal or unavailability children at home.

Officials said that out of a total of 6.38 million children targeted in 30 districts, 78,355 were not vaccinated against polio due to their absence from home when anti-polio teams visited, while 17,479 were not vaccinated due to absence. refusal or the reluctance of their parents.

They said these figures were concerning as the polio eradication program aimed to vaccinate the entire eligible population in order to eliminate this vaccine-preventable childhood disease.

Officials say 1.5% of targeted children were not vaccinated in last campaign

Officials said Peshawar, the provincial capital, was home to most of the polio vaccination-hesitant residents in the province, as 23,998 children remained unvaccinated.

Among them, 15,764 children were unavailable, while 8,234 were not vaccinated due to parental refusal.

Officials said that despite the deployment of most polio workers and others monitoring the campaign, Peshawar was the hotbed of the poliovirus, so the situation merited immediate attention from authorities.

They said the province recorded 10 of the 48 polio cases nationally this year.

Officials said that in most districts, children were at risk of contracting polio due to the presence of the virus in sewage.

They said Dera Ismail Khan, the home district of Chief Minister Ali Amin Khan Gandapur and Governor Faisal Karim Khan Kundi, directed the incidence is three cases, followed by two cases each in Mohmand and Kohat districts and one each in Mohmand, Nowshera and Tank districts.

The officials said Chief Secretary Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry, as head of the provincial polio task force, had requested the district administration and the district health directorate, during every meeting , to ensure that all children received anti-polio drops during each campaign, and issued warnings for action in case of failure to perform its duties.

They said, however, that only a fraction of the targeted children had not been vaccinated, either due to parental refusal or due to the absence of children at home during vaccination campaigns, so that “all hard work of field workers was in vain.”

Officials said this has been happening for two decades.

“Our workers reach more than 98 percent of the targeted children, so only a small number of children remain without vaccination, but they jeopardize the success of the entire exercise,” an official said. Dawn.

He said polio had been eradicated from all over the world, except Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, thanks to vaccines, but refusals to vaccinate in the country threatened the health of their children.

The official said polio teams had not had it easy since two police officers were killed during the October vaccination drive, bringing the death toll from such attacks since 2012 at more than 110.

He added that during this period, more than 300 people, including health workers and police guarding polio teams, were injured in attacks.

Officials said that at first people refused vaccination for religious reasons or because of rumors of a Western plot to sterilize Muslims, but now people link childhood vaccination to road construction, to the supply of water and electricity.

They said that EPI was a government program and therefore it was the responsibility of official mechanisms to ensure that all children were vaccinated and that if this was done, the virus could be eliminated within a few campaigns.

Officials said that after polio was eradicated, the government could direct funds previously used for the prevention and control of other childhood diseases.

Published in Dawn, November 10, 2024