President Asif Ali Zardari has urged parents to vaccinate children as Pakistan prepares to reach 23.9 million youngsters, with seven cases reported this year and frontline teams still facing deadly attacks.
Pakistan’s president has appealed to parents and caregivers to make sure children receive polio vaccination as the country joins the world in marking World Polio Day, a global observance that highlights the continuing threat posed by the virus and the effort to eliminate it altogether.
Asif Ali Zardari said every child under five should receive the two oral drops given during each campaign, while also stressing the need to keep up routine immunisation against polio and other preventable illnesses. His remarks come as Pakistan continues to face one of the most difficult final stretches in the global eradication drive, with the country and Afghanistan remaining the only places where wild poliovirus is still endemic.
The warning lands against a backdrop of persistent security risks for vaccination teams and the police assigned to protect them. In Balochistan last month, unidentified gunmen killed two police constables guarding a polio team, underlining the hazards surrounding a public health effort that has also been undermined by misinformation and long-running vaccine refusals. Conservative and militant voices have falsely claimed the vaccine is part of a Western conspiracy to sterilise Muslim children or cause infertility, claims health officials say have hampered coverage in some communities.
Pakistan is preparing for another large-scale campaign beginning on 2 November, with officials aiming to vaccinate more than 23.9 million children across 997 targeted districts. The country vaccinated 29.3 million children in a nationwide drive last month, and government figures say the overall number of polio cases has fallen by 99.8% from an estimated 20,000 in the early 1990s to 31 last year. So far this year, seven cases have been reported, a reminder that despite major progress, the disease has not yet been defeated.
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