Polio campaign could get boost on Peace Day

Humanitarian aid organisations and health bodies have expressed readiness to carry out a polio vaccination campaign in insecure parts of Afghanistan should armed conflicts cease on International Peace Day on 21 September.

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has launched the campaign in volatile southern and eastern provinces where 1.3 million children are targeted for polio oral drops.

“Peace would create a good opportunity for us to eradicate polio in this country,” said Tahir Pervaiz Mir, a WHO expert in Kabul.

Hundreds of locally trained vaccinators are also expected to immunise about 85,000 children who have totally missed vaccination and immunisation this year in areas under the influence of Taliban rebels.

A purported spokesman for Taliban insurgents, Qari Yousuf Ahamdi, told IRIN their fighters would allow the immunisation drive in areas currently under their control.

Local elders in Kandahar and Helmand provinces - hotbeds of the insurgency - have given assurances that Taliban gunmen would not attack or abduct vaccinators, said a UN official who did not want to be identified.

Afghanistan is among only four polio-endemic countries in the world where the disease has not been eradicated so far.

According to UNICEF and WHO, five children have been paralysed by this preventable disease in recent weeks.

Alleviation of suffering

The UN has 6,000 local and international staff in Afghanistan and the heads of over a dozen UN agencies have said peace would enable them to alleviate human suffering in the country.

“With peace in Afghanistan, we can help ensure that no Afghan school child fails to concentrate on their studies because of an empty stomach,” Rick Corsino, the country director of World Food Programme (WFP), told reporters.

In the lead up to Peace Day, UNICEF and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have urged that children and teachers at schools and literacy centres around the country be protected from all acts of violence, the UN News Centre said on 19 September.

Precarious ceasefire

On the eve of International Peace Day the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has launched one of its biggest military operations in southern Helmand Province.

According to an ISAF press release about 2,500 Afghan and international troops, backed by aerial support, are involved in the operation, which aims to “identify Taliban forces and drive them out of their traditional strongholds in the Upper Gereshk Valley”.

Asked if ISAF would suspend military operations on 21 September, Gen Dan McNeill, commander of ISAF, said in a statement: “No one wants world peace more than the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines serving their respective countries as part of the ISAF. Every day, the men and women of ISAF answer the noble call of assisting the Afghan people to find peace and long-term security.”

Meanwhile, an official at Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defence said no plans for a temporary ceasefire were in place on Peace Day.

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