Over 86m children vaccinated against polio under UAE-funded project

More than 86 million children under the age of five were vaccinated against polio between 2014 and 2020 under a UAE-funded programme, data shared by Emirates News Agency (WAM) said.

Pakistan is one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with Afghanistan. The country is facing a challenging situation in polio eradication with the upsurge in the number of polio cases. In 2020, 84 polio cases were reported across the country.

The government’s efforts to rid the country of polio have lately suffered setbacks due to attacks on vaccinators and police personnel guarding them. The deadly violence is also cited as a factor for the upsurge in new cases that had dropped to only 12 cases in 2018.

The UAE Polio Vaccination Campaign is part of the UAE-Pakistan Assistance Program (UAE-PAP) launched by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan in 2011 to support global efforts to protect communities against diseases and epidemics.

The prince has since donated $247.8 million for the cause, with an emphasis on Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“The campaign’s success underscores the UAE’s leading role in reinforcing the efforts of the international community and the programs of the United Nations agencies that aim to protect communities from diseases, pandemics, crises and disasters,” UAE-PAP director Abdullah Khalifa AlGhafli said.

The campaign covered high-risk areas, especially in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, where over half of 500 million doses donated by the UAE were administered.

In 2019, conservative hard-liners in Peshawar spread rumours of children falling sick due to the vaccine, triggering a backlash in KP, where most of the country’s polio cases have been detected.

“Children in these areas are in constant need of vaccines throughout the year, due to malnutrition and weak immunity, as well as an environment that acts as an incubator of the disease, which makes the job of the program’s teams even harder, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic,” Al-Ghafli added, as he praised Pakistani health workers who faced “dire field conditions and challenges.”