Pakistani anti-polio drive faces attacks, mistrust

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s anti-polio campaign has been hobbled by recent deadly attacks on health workers and by parents in some parts of the country resisting vaccinations.

New polio cases continue to surface, with eight new ones reported this year. The polio virus has also been found in sewage samples in several cities, including Rawalpindi, adjacent to Islamabad, the capital.

Last week, a nationwide vaccine drive had to be temporarily suspended after two separate attacks that killed a female health worker and two police officers guarding a polio-eradication team.

In the drive that ended Saturday, Pakistan vaccinated more than 37 million children, nearing its target of 39 million. But in the cities of Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta, the active search for unvaccinated children has been suspended given the security fears.

There are now doubts about whether the next vaccination drive, scheduled to start in June, will start on time.

Babar Bin Atta, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s point man on polio eradication, said in an interview that environmental sampling shows that the virus is still being transmitted in 12 major cities and many remote regions of the country.

“This poses a serious threat to children all over the country,” Atta said.

Pakistan is one of only three countries, along with neighboring Afghanistan and Nigeria, where polio still exists.

The local campaign to eradicate polio remains a source of deep-seated suspicions and fears. Hard-line Islamists believe the vaccination drive is part of a Western effort to sterilize Muslims. The fact that the CIA used a vaccination team to track down Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani town in 2011 has helped fuel the resistance to vaccination campaigns in the country.

Militants have frequently attacked health workers, accusing them of being spies, and police have been deployed to provide security to anti-polio teams.

Poor immunization services, malnutrition, unsafe water and poor sanitation have allowed the virus to survive and paralyze vulnerable children with low immunity levels, officials say. And anti-vaccine propaganda on social media has compounded the problem.

“As a result, we continue missing children during immunization campaigns,” Atta said.

Successive governments have introduced awareness campaigns and repeatedly enlisted religious scholars to allay concerns of parents and counter anti-vaccination propaganda. Still, attacks on polio workers have continued.

Even big cities, including Islamabad, have seen resistance to polio immunization campaigns.

“The biggest challenge in cities like Islamabad is the refusal by parents,” Muhammad Hamza Shafqaat, deputy commissioner of Islamabad, said in an interview. “Even if 1% of the children don’t get the polio drops, the polio sample remains alive in the environment and we have to work harder in the next campaign.”

The government is focusing on addressing the misconceptions in communities, and building trust and demand for polio vaccinations, officials said.

On Sunday, Noor-ul-Haq Qadri, minister for religious affairs, sought the help of clerics and religious scholars in Peshawar, warning them about those spreading negative propaganda against polio vaccination.

“Religious scholars across the country agree that children need to be vaccinated against polio,” the minister was quoted as saying.