Pakistan’s War on Polio Falters Amid Attacks on Health Workers and Mistrust - The New York Times
Pakistan’s War on Polio Falters Amid Attacks on Health Workers and Mistrust - The New York Times |
- Pakistan’s War on Polio Falters Amid Attacks on Health Workers and Mistrust - The New York Times
- Pakistan suspends polio vaccine drive after health worker attacks - DW (English)
- WHO, UNICEF ask Bio Farma to stockpile polio vaccine - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta Post
| Pakistan’s War on Polio Falters Amid Attacks on Health Workers and Mistrust - The New York Times Posted: 29 Apr 2019 02:26 AM PDT  ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani officials had been hopeful that 2019 would be the year they would succeed in their campaign against polio, and declare Pakistan polio free. But a complete victory has proved elusive. Instead, the country's anti-polio campaign has been hobbled by recent deadly attacks on health workers and resistance from parents in some parts of the country to having their children vaccinated against the disease. Amid those challenges, new polio cases continue to surface, with eight new ones reported this year. The polio virus has also been found in sewage samples in several cities, including Rawalpindi, adjacent to Islamabad, the capital, a worrisome sign to health officials. Last week, a nationwide vaccine drive had to be temporarily suspended after two separate attacks that killed a female health worker and two police officers guarding a polio-eradication team. In the vaccination drive that ended Saturday, Pakistan managed to vaccinate more than 37 million children, nearing its target of 39 million. But in the cities of Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta, the active search for unvaccinated children has been suspended given the security fears. There are now doubts about whether the next vaccination drive, scheduled to start in June, will start on time. Babar Bin Atta, Prime Minister Imran Khan's point person on polio eradication, acknowledged in an interview that the situation remains challenging. Apart from the eight new reported polio cases, environmental sampling shows that the virus is still being transmitted in 12 major cities and many remote regions of the country. "This poses a serious threat to children all over the country," Mr. Atta said. Pakistan is one of only three countries, along with neighboring Afghanistan and Nigeria, where polio still exists. The local campaign to eradicate polio remains a source of deep-seated suspicions and fears. Hard-line Islamists believe the vaccination drive is part of a Western effort to sterilize Muslims. The fact that the C.I.A. used a vaccination team to track down Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani town in 2011 has helped fuel the resistance to vaccination campaigns in the country. Militants have frequently attacked health workers, accusing them of being spies, and the police have been deployed to provide security to anti-polio teams. Poor immunization services, malnutrition, unsafe water and poor sanitation have allowed the virus to survive and paralyze vulnerable children with low immunity levels, officials say. And anti-vaccine propaganda on social media has compounded the problem. Image  "As a result, we continue missing children during immunization campaigns," Mr. Atta said. Successive governments have introduced awareness campaigns and repeatedly enlisted religious scholars to allay concerns of parents and counter anti-vaccination propaganda. Still, attacks on polio workers have continued. On April 22, an angry mob set fire to a government health facility in Peshawar, the provincial capital of the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, after rumors spread that expired vaccination drops were being administered to children. Dozens of children complained of nausea and vomiting after getting the polio drops. Within hours, thousands of parents thronged local hospitals and demanded their children be examined. As panic spread and an emergency was declared in local hospitals, officials clarified that the vaccine was neither expired nor dangerous. Mr. Atta said he had lived in Peshawar for 18 years but had never witnessed such mass hysteria and panic. A day after the burning of the health facility, a police officer providing security to health workers was killed, also in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Another police officer was killed the next day in a different part of the province. At least 700,000 families refused polio vaccination in the province because of rumors and panic, the local news media reported. And on Thursday, unidentified gunmen shot and killed a female health worker while another female worker was critically injured in an attack in southwestern Pakistan. Even big cities, including Islamabad, have seen resistance to polio immunization campaigns. "The biggest challenge in cities like Islamabad is the refusal by parents," Muhammad Hamza Shafqaat, the deputy commissioner of Islamabad, said in an interview. "Even if 1 percent of the children don't get the polio drops, the polio sample remains alive in the environment, and we have to work harder in the next campaign." The government is focusing on addressing the misconceptions in communities and building trust and demand for polio vaccinations, officials said. On Sunday, Noor-ul-Haq Qadri, the minister for religious affairs, sought the help of clerics and religious scholars in Peshawar, warning them about those spreading negative propaganda against polio vaccination. "Religious scholars across the country agree that children need to be vaccinated against polio," the minister was quoted as saying.  |
| Pakistan suspends polio vaccine drive after health worker attacks - DW (English) Posted: 27 Apr 2019 01:15 AM PDT  Pakistani authorities have suspended the anti-polio campaign "for an indefinite period" across the country amid increasing violent attacks on polio workers. An anti-polio drive was launched in all districts of the country on April 22. The South Asian country's National Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) for polio directed all provinces on Friday to halt the drive, in an effort to protect some 270,000 polio field staff from attacks, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported on Saturday. On Thursday, gunmen opened fire on female health workers in the southwestern town of Chaman, killing one and wounding another. In separate attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday, assailants killed two policemen who were assigned to protect a polio vaccination team in the northwest. "After the Peshawar incident, the uncertain and threatening situation for the frontline polio workers has emerged and we need to save the program from a further major damage," Dawn quoted the EOC as saying in a statement, adding that the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (SPEI) partners had backed the move. "Hence, no further vaccination or catch-up activity will be conducted in any area for this campaign," said the EOC. The violence coincided with rumors of children suffering from adverse reactions to a polio vaccine. Read more: WHO launches worldwide effort to completely eliminate polio Violence and mistrust Polio is endemic in only three countries in the world – Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. Last year, a relatively rare strain was also detected in Papua New Guinea. Polio is a highly infectious viral disease, mainly affecting children younger than five. It can cause permanent paralysis and death, but can be prevented through immunization. The virus is spread through contaminated food and water. Anti-polio campaigns have faced immense problems in Pakistan, with radical Islamists targeting health teams and people mistrusting the drive in some parts of the country. Read more: Why did Germany's Heinrich Böll Foundation leave Pakistan? Islamists claim that the US's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) organized a fake vaccination drive to help track down Osama bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad, where US forces later killed the al-Qaida leader in 2011. In July 2012, Pakistani authorities had to postpone an anti-polio campaign in the northwestern region of Waziristan after Taliban leaders banned inoculations, claiming the drive was similar to a hepatitis vaccination program run by the imprisoned Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi, who they say had helped the CIA in the bin Laden hunt. The same year, the United Nations suspended its polio eradication campaign in Pakistan after the Taliban killed two of its workers in the northwestern city of Charsadda. At least 100 people have been killed in assaults targeting vaccine teams since 2012. Read more: Amid Taliban threats, Pakistan hits record polio cases Fake news Pakistan's latest anti-polio campaign was also hampered by social media reports and videos claiming numerous children had been killed by the polio vaccine. As a result, thousands of parents refused to allow their children to be inoculated for polio. Read more: Pakistan: 'No policy to detain parents for refusing polio vaccines' Health officials say a "pre-planned conspiracy" was responsible for the panic. They say the misinformation has inflamed already existing distrust of anti-polio campaigns, resulting in "a three-fold jump in refusals by parents to vaccinate their children" in the last two years. Authorities say that some 700,000 children missed polio inoculations in Punjab province alone, putting too many lives at risk. "Here people have little knowledge, so if they see a professor allegedly from the US or elsewhere [on social media] who is against the vaccine, they are easily convinced," Rana Safdar from Pakistan's National Institute of Health told AFP news agency. "Now there is a pushback. We need to regain the momentum," he added. Sherry Rehman, leader of the opposition in Pakistan's Senate (upper house of parliament), said in a message on Twitter that "the polio vaccine is effective and safe ... Parents everywhere in the country must NOT hold back. The vaccine is safe."  |
| WHO, UNICEF ask Bio Farma to stockpile polio vaccine - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta Post Posted: 27 Apr 2019 08:03 PM PDT  The World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nation Children's Fund (UNICEF) have asked state-owned pharmaceutical company PT Bio Farma to produce and store monovalent oral polio vaccine type 2 (mOPV-2) as part of their effort to have a global stockpile of the vaccine. Bio Farma director Sri Harsi Teteki explained that the company had also received an official letter from the WHO through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) about their request for 500 million doses of the mOPV-2 global stockpile. "We responded positively to the request of the GPEI-WHO," Sri said in Bandung, West Java, on Friday. Recently, UNICEF's supply division from Copenhagen visited a Bio Farma factory in Bandung to discuss cooperation on the procurement of the mOPV-2 global stockpile, she added. Sri said Bio Farma, as the largest vaccine producer in Southeast Asia, supported the global move to eradicate polio, adding that a polio outbreak recently hit several countries, including Nigeria, Congo, Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. She said representatives of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and PATH also visited Bio Farma in Bandung to discuss cooperation in research and development to develop new vaccines. "Since 2012, Bio Farma has cooperated with the BMGF, including the transfer of technology, in trying to produce new vaccines like novel OPV," said Bio Farma president director M. Rahman Roestan. Novel OPV (nOPV) is a new generation polio vaccine, which is being developed in line with the global goal to eradicate polio by 2020. The research into nOPV includes the development of vaccine technology, three-phase clinical trials and the production process. "We are trusted because we have the capability to take part in ongoing research, which has taken place for five years now," Rahman added. (bbn)  |
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