Islamabad, May 1 (IANS). Two new cases of polio have been reported from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province of Pakistan. This brings the total number of cases in the country to three since the beginning of this year. This information was given by the local media on Friday.
An official of the Pakistan Polio Eradication Program, on condition of anonymity, told leading daily ‘Dawn’ that one case each has been reported in Bannu and North Waziristan. These cases have been confirmed by the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC).
“Both these cases were detected through the Polio Virus Surveillance Network and have been confirmed by a WHO-accredited laboratory of the National Institutes of Health (NIS),” the official said.
Earlier, the first case of this year was reported in Sujawal district of Sindh province. Now the total number of cases has reached three.
Now Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries in the world where polio cases are still found.
According to ‘Dawn’, last month it was also reported that polio teams were attacked in some areas of Balochistan including Hangu and Bannu of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Police escorts were killed in these attacks and some polio workers were also kidnapped.
These attacks took place at a time when a vaccination campaign was going on to give polio doses to children across the country.
It was reported in March that about 2,33,000 children were deprived of polio drops. The reasons for this were security problems, people’s opposition in some areas and snow covered areas. Of these, about 1,84,000 children were from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while about 50,000 children could not get vaccinated in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Refusal of the vaccine on the part of parents also remains a big problem. In Karachi alone, people refused to take the vaccine in about 31,000 cases, which is about 58 percent of the total refusal cases in the entire country.
This raises questions as to how much issues such as misinformation, poor planning, poor local governance and lack of political attention are responsible.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has imposed polio-related travel restrictions on Pakistan since 2014. Under this, people traveling internationally are required to have a certificate of polio vaccine.
–IANS
AY/ABM