Polio and Pakistan

Syed Ghayur Ahmed

According to the WHO report, the polio virus can be transmitted from one person to another, its virus can attack the spinal cord and cripple the child for life, and in extreme cases, life can be lost. Three countries on top list, which include Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now after a long time and despite the intervention of the extremist group Boko Haram, Nigeria has been declared polio-free, Afghanistan is second in the list.

The polio virus spread among children due to the country’s civil war and lack of infrastructure, but after the success of the Taliban in 2021 and the insistence of other countries, children were immunized to this disease on a large scale in last March. In order to get rid of this virus, about nine million children were vaccinated against the virus. Director of the Afghanistan National Emergency Operation Center,(NEOC) Mr. Nik Wali Shah Momin, said in a statement that children in 31 out of 34 provinces of Afghanistan were given these drops in a four-day campaign. This process will also be started in the remaining provinces later the situation will be normal in the northern areas.

Now let’s come to Pakistan, where polio drops have been controversial since the first day, before 2016, most of the scholars were against it and were calling it a conspiracy of Western countries against Islam, and the people listen their voice as they have more influence on the people of Pakistan. This was the first reason for the rejection of polio by masses. So on the vise action the government made the scholars aware of the harms of the disease through an awareness campaign, after which the public was told through a joint (Islamic statement) Fatwa of the learned scholars that in the polio drops there is nothing harmful and it is not against Islam, after which it was believed that Pakistan will become a polio-free country one day.

But unfortunately, people associated with polio are still being attacked on a daily basis. According to reports, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has accepted responsibility for these attacks. A joint statement from these outfit if a Muslim feed polio drops to their kids, the child will grow up to be immoral, disrespectful and far away from Islamic traditions and will not be able to develop sexually.

The second reason behind terrorist attack that, theoretically, the Taliban considers Al-Qaeda as its leader and they say that the help of America in 2011 In a fake hepatitis campaign in the northern city of Abbottabad, Dr. Shakeel Afridi took samples from Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who was later killed in a military operation.

Regardless of all these conspiracy theories, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, assured the then Prime Minister Imran Khan during his visit to Pakistan in 2022 that we will fully support Pakistan in fighting against this deadly disease. An index has announced aid of two billion dollars to eradicate polio from Pakistan. Pakistan is working with great speed against this disease as well as the obstacles associated with it, for example, against extremist organizations.