ISLAMABAD: Pakistan kicked off an anti-polio vaccination campaign on Monday to vaccinate 9.5 million children across several districts in the country amid a surge in cases of the disease, state-run media reported.
The development takes place after Pakistan reported three people contracted the disease last week. Two of the cases were reported in Pakistan’s southwestern Killa Abdullah district while one child contracted the disease in the southern port city of Karachi.
Polio has been eliminated in developed nations but persists in parts of India, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is a highly infectious disease that invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis. While polio mainly affects children under five years of age, anyone who is unvaccinated can contract the disease at any age.
“Anti-polio campaign of varied duration will start in forty-one districts of the country from tomorrow,” the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported on Sunday. “During the special campaign, more than 9.5 million children under five years of age will be administered polio vaccine.”
It said the campaign would be held in 16 districts of Balochistan, 11 districts of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), eight districts of Sindh and five districts of Punjab province. It said that a door-to-door polio campaign will be conducted in specific union councils of Islamabad as well.
“This campaign is being launched in view of increasing polio cases in Balochistan,” APP said.
National Command and Operation Center Commander Muhammad Anwar Haq said the campaign will be conducted in areas where polio virus is “continuously present.”
“He appealed to parents to consider it their national duty to join this campaign and vaccinate the children,” APP said.
Polio vaccination efforts in Pakistan have been hampered by the belief among many Pakistanis, particularly those residing in the conservative tribal areas, that the medicine is a Western campaign aimed at sterilizing the country’s population or a cover for Western spies.
In 2012, the local Taliban had ordered a ban on immunization against polio in some tribal districts. At least 11 policemen have been killed this year while on security duty during vaccination campaigns that are frequently targeted by militants. Dozens of polio workers have also lost their lives over the decades.
The 2011 US special forces raid inside Pakistan that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, also increased masses’ fears about polio vaccination. A Pakistani doctor was accused of using a fake vaccination campaign to collect DNA samples that the CIA was believed to have been using to verify bin Laden’s identity. The doctor remains jailed in Pakistan.