In April, almost 40 million children missed their polio drops in Pakistan after the cancelation of the nationwide vaccination campaign. Alongside Afghanistan, Pakistan is one of only two countries in the world where polio is still endemic.
The nation was very close to becoming polio free, with only 12 cases in 2018, but last year, the number of cases rose to 147.
Pakistan was last year accused of covering up a resurgence of the P2 strain of the virus, which was thought to have been eradicated in 2014.
Photo: Reuters
“We will plan a nationwide campaign as soon as we get an opportunity,” Pakistani National Coordinator for Polio Eradication Rana Muhammad Safdar said. “But we are equally worried about routine immunization campaigns as those are being missed due to COVID-19. I fear for the outbreak of vaccine drive diseases, such as measles.”
Forty-seven cases so far this year have been reported.
Pakistan is back to 2014 levels, the worst year in recent records, six Pakistani polio officials and scientific experts said on condition of anonymity.
The WHO-led Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) on March 24 recommended that all vaccination programs be paused until the second half of this year.
“We did not want to have the program be responsible for worsening the situation with COVID-19,” GPEI director Michel Zaffran said.
Pakistani Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq, who received an award for her work against polio, said that the pause is dangerous.
“If one program was not effective, we would call it a disaster, but missing an entire national campaign will have unimaginable consequences,” she said.
Officials said that the disease has spread beyond the three core areas of Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar, and is present in central Pakistan.
The virus spreads easily in summer and this year could see more than 200 cases.
“Nothing can be worse than this situation. We have positive samples everywhere. It is strengthening and spreading,” a scientific expert in the program said.
Pakistan has received international funding for polio eradication since 1994, but Safdar said that it was not possible to know the exact amount, as the aid has come from various groups.
“We have a failure tag attached with us,” an official who has worked with the polio program for more than 15 years said. “We are the most funded polio program [in the world]. India eradicated polio with lesser funding.”
Donors might not say it openly, but “definitely, they are worried and frustrated,” Farooq said.
US President Trump’s freeze on US funding to the WHO has also made it difficult to fund the polio program.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is one of the founding members of the GPEI, and also provides assistance and funds for the polio program.
“CDC-supported programs and activities will be put at risk the longer a funding halt continues,” said Benjamin Haynes, deputy chief of the CDC’s News Media Branch.
There is also a fear among Pakistani officials that the virus could spread to other parts of the world.
“It would not take it a long time to spread. Everything depends on the gaps and the time the virus gets in Pakistan to spread to other parts of the world,” Safdar said.
“Some people don’t take polio seriously because there is no direct death involved in it, but it does have a huge human cost,” a scientific expert said.
The International Monitoring Board in its report last year said that the polio program had become “a political football” in Pakistan.
Opposition members in the Pakistani Senate have demanded the arrest of Babar Bin Atta — Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s focal representative on polio eradication, who resigned last year — on charges of negligence.
“I want to be hopeful, but I can’t as the entire program was politicized by the ruling government,” Farooq said.
Pakistan spends less than 1 percent of GDP on health services, last year’s report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said, while the WHO recommends an allocation of 6 percent.
Persuading many in Pakistan’s most-underdeveloped regions to support polio eradication is an uphill battle.
“During our campaigns, some people asked us to make basic health units, to provide free treatment for diarrhea and even give them medicine for headaches, and then come with polio vaccines. Pakistan needs to invest in public health, not in bombs,” one expert said.
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