A nationwide anti-polio campaign is currently underway across the country to immunize more than 44.3 million children aged five or below. According to the details, a week-long polio campaign will administer polio drops to 10.3 million infants in Sindh, 22.6 million in Punjab, more than 7.4 million children in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 2.5 million children in Balochistan, and over 250,000 children in Gilgit-Baltistan would be vaccinated during the ongoing polio campaign in the country. Polio teams constituted by federal and provincial health departments are approaching the children through a door-to-door campaign in all 159 districts of the country. The government has appealed to the parents to cooperate with the polio staff and contact health authorities on helpline 1166 in case of anti-polio vaccination team fails to reach them during the campaign.
Pakistan and its first-door neighbor Afghanistan are the two nations worldwide that failed to defeat the deadly polio virus and polio continues to threaten the health and well-being of children in their countries. The successive governments along with their global partners have made concerted efforts to eradicate polio from our country over the past almost three decades but so far cases of polio infections are being reported in some areas including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Presently, Pakistan’s failure to control this epidemic has become a stigma for the entire nation, because the South Asian country failed to achieve its goal despite massive global support, the availability of human and material resources and technical expertise only because of non-cooperation from the public in certain areas. There have been multiple conspiracy theories and self-coined religious biases linked to the anti-polio medicines and the purpose of the vaccination which prompted opposition and refusal of parents to administer polio vaccines to their kids. Meanwhile, the fake anti-polio campaign by the CIA to confirm Osama Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad’s Waziristan Haveli Complex further caused doubts and suspicions among the masses regarding the genuine need for polio immunizations in children.
Pakistan’s continuous failure to achieve its goal against the deadly epidemic has caused a challenging and embarrassing situation for the country as all traditional strategies, incentives, and motivations have proved to be futile, while continued anti-state and anti-public propaganda and false conservativeness of parents pose serious risks to the children health, national interests, the country’s prestige and the broader well-being of the public. The implementation of harsh measures becomes unavoidable to accomplish the national cause and secure future generations from grave risks. After implementing various measures to motivate parents to immunize their kids including the use of religious clerics, tribal notables, and awareness campaigns in the media, the government is currently mulling over the scenario to pass legislation to penalize the parents resisting polio administration to their children by introducing harsh measures such as blocking their national IDs or Bank Accounts, imposing fine or awarding imprisonment but so far no practical steps have been taken in this regard.
Historically, the great national cause of Polio Free Pakistan has largely been marred due to the lack of interest of the political leadership and the traditional slackness of bureaucracy that persists, and political leaders hesitate in taking regressive punitive measures against the individuals who resist polio vaccine and cause serious risk to children health and endanger vital national interests along with causing great embarrassment and humiliation at the international level. Although, a nationwide campaign is currently underway and authorities will surely administer vaccines to all children but unwilling segments of society will again be left out due to the absence/ no implementation of any punitive/retaliatory measures by the government. Hence, the government must prioritize the national interests while shedding off unjust biases by taking harsh measures to ensure 100 per cent vaccination of all children under 5 years of age, so no single case of polio infection ever occurs in this nation in the future.
