World Polio Day: Pakistan’s Polio Problem Continues

A photo of Zalguna Wadood sightseeing Egypt with two other women who use wheelchairs went viral in Pakistan last year, becoming a symbol of what women with disabilities can do.

Wadoood was only seven months old when polio paralyzed her legs. Her parents didn’t know to let her have her vaccinations.

“I can’t even move out of bed without my wheelchair near me…it’s part of me now,” Wadood, 38 and now employed by the United Nations World Food Programme, told VOA.

She is one of thousands of Pakistanis disabled by polio, an incurable and highly contagious viral disease that infects a person’s spinal cord and can cause muscles to stop working.

The invention of the polio vaccine in the 1950s and 1960s wiped the disease out of the industrialized world, and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, launched in 1988, almost eliminated the disease through large-scale vaccination campaigns, even in developing countries. eradicated.

As Marked by the Global Health Community only Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to tackle wild poliovirus.

in pakistan

After 15 months with no reported cases of wild poliovirus, Pakistan has recorded 20 cases since April. Of these, 17 cases are in the former tribal areas of North Waziristan bordering Afghanistan, and 3 are from neighboring areas.

Dr. Shazad Beig, who heads Pakistan’s polio eradication program, said insecurity, migration patterns, harassment of polio teams, mistrust of vaccines, and avoidance of immunization practices among community members and polio workers. I condemn collusion to find a way out.

“They are unsure [the vaccine] It’s safe for children,” Baig told VOA. “They think the government is forcing this vaccine on children. [so] There are some hidden agendas. ”

Despite Pakistan’s decades-long polio eradication programme, many Pakistanis believe the vaccine either renders their children sterile or contains pork-based ingredients forbidden in Islamic scriptures. In 2019, rumors that vaccines were making children sick triggered a surge in denials. The year ended with 149 cases recorded in Pakistan, significantly higher than the previous year.

And vaccines have become a bargaining chip used to pressure governments to meet community needs.

“So roads, bridges, electricity, whatever they need, when the campaign starts, they say, ‘You do it. That’s when we accept vaccination.’ Let’s go,” said Byg.

Also, local customs make children more susceptible to contracting the virus. In many cases, male healthcare workers cannot enter a home if there are no men in the household. In conservative communities that do not allow women to work, the lack of female polio professionals further limits access to children.

Baig told VOA that less than 1% of polio team members in the Old Tribal Area are women.

Saira Abid, a polio worker from North Waziristan, told VOA she was heartbroken that most polio cases were recorded in her ancestral village.

Displaced by the 2014 military campaign against terrorists and forced to break with tradition due to financial difficulties, Abid has been working as a community health worker in Peshawar since 2015.

“When you go to my village, you see the words ‘locked’ written in chalk on the wall because men are not allowed inside,” Abid said. During mass immunization campaigns, polio workers mark each household’s immunization status on a wall by the front door.

Abid feels comfortable working in the urban environment of Peshawar, but she says it is not safe for her to work in her village due to strict local customs and the presence of extremists. says. Polio in North Waziristan in June killed three of her team members and injured one.

Security is a long-standing challenge for polio workers in Pakistan. Many have been murdered by extremists who see vaccination as part of a Western scheme, or attacked by angry parents at being forced to vaccinate their children.

in afghanistan

The safety of polio workers is also a cross-border issue in Afghanistan, where there were eight polio workers. Killed in another attack in February.

Surprisingly, according to the World Health Organization, Afghanistan has recorded only two cases of wild poliovirus so far this year, marking the lowest levels of the virus in the country’s history.

However, only 43 cases of vaccine-derived polio have been reported in Afghanistan. This vaccine uses a weaker form of the polio virus that can infect another unvaccinated person.

Kamal Shah Said, UNICEF’s spokesperson in Afghanistan, told VOA earlier this year:

The Taliban pledged support for the polio campaign after taking Afghanistan last August, but had banned immunization activities in areas under their control for three years before that.

At least seven campaigns have been launched in Afghanistan since November 2021.

world polio day

On World Polio Day, Afghanistan ended its immunization campaign and Pakistan started its immunization campaign.

From 3.6 million children without access in Afghanistan in 2018, a WHO statement in August said the number of unvaccinated children had fallen to 700,000.

According to the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 400,000 children go missing in Pakistan every year, despite polio eradication campaigns being rampant.

Dr Baig of Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Program is concerned that the massive floods in the summer have increased the risk of polio being spread by unsanitary conditions, and is frustrated with the government’s relief efforts. victims may boycott campaigns to pressure authorities to provide better facilities.

Zarguna Wadood, who visited Egypt last year, is also a disability rights activist. She hopes that her parents will learn from her experience and vaccinate her children against polio as they did for her three younger siblings.

“Whatever I am, I am still disabled. Not everyone can have the same power as me,” Wadood told VOA. “