Efforts to eradicate polio appear to have taken a blow following confirmation of a third case in Pakistan's Sindh Province this year.
Polio, a debilitating disease mainly striking children, was confirmed in a 16-month-old child in Shikarpur District in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh on 21 March. In response, the Health Ministry will conclude a three-day campaign in Shikarpur and the two adjacent districts of Larkana and Kambar on 27 March.
Earlier this month, the country's Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI), launched in 1994 by the Health Ministry’s Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) in collaboration with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, had targeted 6.5 million children under five in Sindh, which has an estimated population of 42-44 million.
To further contain the virus, all districts of Sindh will be covered during next month's sub-national anti-polio drive scheduled for 8-10 April.
Not a failure?
But health officials have so far played down the significance of the latest case.
“On the contrary, this is good news,” said an unfazed Tariq Abdel Rehman, leading the World Health Organization’s (WHO's) polio surveillance team in Sindh. “It means our surveillance is strong,” he said, adding: “New cases have surfaced wherever the polio campaign has been on its last leg. We are very near to achieving complete eradication."
“Everything is in order and we are going about [things] just the right way, with proper logistical support for the field workers," said Salma Kausar Ali, EPI’s project director for Sindh.
 Nobody points out the tremendous effort that has gone into bringing down the number of cases from 23,000 in 1994 to just a handful now. |
Ali said that except for one case (among the three) where the parents had refused to administer the polio drops, the other two had been administered the vaccine more than once.
“It proves that our team reached them and other remote areas not once but many times,” the health official said.
Referring to the detection of new cases, Rehman said: “We have to react vigorously to the reported cases and further scale up our current quality and number of campaigns.”
According to WHO, the world's success in eradicating polio depends on four countries where the virus remains endemic - India, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In 2005, five polio cases were found in Sindh. In 2006 and 2007 that figure rose to 12 in each year in the same province.
At a recent review meeting by Pakistan's EPI, it was pointed out that it was the country's mobile populations that needed to be monitored to stall the disease's spread.
The movement of people across the country poses a significant challenge to eradication efforts, Ali said.
“When security conditions worsen in North Waziristan [tribal belt bordering Afghanistan] and the people there are forced to leave, they don’t go to the neighbouring areas, but come to Karachi. Many may be carrying the virus with them," she said.
Ali said the recent change of government also posed a problem: “Political participation is most important in the eradication of polio. The effort to develop rapport and enjoy the confidence that we had reached so painstakingly in the last eight years has gone out of the window. We will have to woo the new government anew, but hopefully they will be amenable, and our task easier,” she said.
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