World Polio Day: Why Pakistan is failing to eradicate the disease - TRT World
World Polio Day: Why Pakistan is failing to eradicate the disease - TRT World |
| World Polio Day: Why Pakistan is failing to eradicate the disease - TRT World Posted: 27 Oct 2019 09:21 AM PDT
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the only countries in the world, where polio is endemic. And in contrast to recent years of gradual improvement, this year there have been at least 72 cases of polio in Pakistan after only eight in 2018. In Pakistan's Balochistan province, health workers consider it a productive workday when they are able to vaccinate enough children with polio shots - supported by their parents - as they pass from house to house in the provincial capital city of Quetta. Once a vaccine is administered, the health workers mark the child's house to record it, while police and security officers keep a watchful eye. But while things here are going smoothly, in the wider battle against the deadly polio virus - which remains stubbornly entrenched in parts of Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan - the country is struggling. In a statement issued on 3 October 2019, the World Health Organisation said it was "gravely concerned" by an increase in polio cases in Pakistan. Rashid Razaq, the Co-ordinator of the Polio Emergency Operation Centre in Baluchistan, says the situation is worrying. "This year so far in Pakistan we have reported about 76 cases, and our contribution from Baluchistan has been seven, unfortunately. The seven cases have been reported from four different districts, which include Killa Abdullah - we have three - Jaffarabad - two - and Quetta - one. And now recently one in Harnai," he says. That recent rise contrasts with a trend in recent years of gradual improvement. This year there have been at least 72 cases of polio in Pakistan after only eight in 2018. Pakistani officials say, the rise this year might be partly due to continuous traffic across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Scepticism from families is also part of the picture, they say, while attacks on health workers have been a concern. In April a health worker and two policemen escorting vaccination teams were killed in separate attacks. According to conservative estimates, at least 70 officials associated with the polio programme have been killed in Pakistan in the last seven years. "(There is) suspicion about the vaccine service efficacy as well. So there are various reasons for that, whereas the lack of co-operation from the community, well as well as the quality of the complaints are so that we could not administer two drops to a child. All of these aspects needs to be improved," concedes Razaq. Here in the village of Chaman, close to the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, 11-year-old Hassan Khan is living with polio. His father, Nisar, urges other parents to get their children vaccinated. But in part of Pakistan, parental suspicion runs deep. Some doubt the vaccine's efficacy; others listen to the words of militants who falsely claim the polio vaccine is a western conspiracy. The Government is doing what it can to dispel such concerns, working with religious leaders to try to send a different message. Hassan's father Nisar's plea is straightforward. "My son is affected with polio. Everyone should try to arrange polio drops for their children, so they can keep their children safe from polio. And my message to all (is) please, give the polio vaccine to your children," he says. In Rawalpindi, Farzana Bibi knows about life with polio all too well. She's a polio survivor, and her experience is driving her to work with the vaccination campaign as a supervisor. "I was operated on nine times and the last time the doctors told me, "your treatment is not possible now, even if you go abroad". I was hopeful in the beginning, (but) later I knew that there is no treatment for polio-affected parts of body. But I have decided I have to save lives of children by serving as a polio vaccinator," she says. In the city of Rawalpindi, this local dispensary is having a busy day. Later, local official Muhammad Nadeem and a colleague will go out on the streets with a cooler containing the vaccines. Nadeem says the suspicion about the vaccination programme takes a toll on health workers. "Sometimes the behaviour of parents is insulting (to) the polio vaccinating team, even the staff become disheartened and quit later. We, as staff, face many difficulties, but are not discouraged. Working with lots of passion, we are ready to eradicate polio," he says. Pakistan is just one of three countries in the world - the others are Afghanistan and Nigeria - where polio is endemic. Recently, parents in conservative places and rural areas in Pakistan have been using fake "pinky marks", a marker for polio workers to know that a child has been recently vaccinated, to refuse vaccination. Environmental challenges also pose a threat to the polio eradication drive, with sewage samples testing positive for the virus in 12 cities. In October, the World Health Organisation said of Pakistan that "the increasing refusal by individuals and communities to accept vaccination is a serious setback to eradication". But, while the WHO said it was "very concerned about the current status of the management of the polio program in Pakistan", it also noted that "steps are being taken to get the program back on track". Source: AP  |
| We’ve almost eliminated polio worldwide. Here’s how. - Global News Posted: 27 Oct 2019 03:00 AM PDT Safia Ibrahim didn't learn to walk until she was six years old. The now-37-year-old contracted polio as a baby in Somalia. It wasn't until she moved to Canada as an eight-year-old child that she received treatment for her disease — leg braces and physical therapy — as there is no cure. "I used to crawl. I didn't get to play like the other children," she said. Even now, the Toronto mother of three still needs to use crutches or braces if she walks any distance. Picture polio and you probably picture black-and-white photos of iron lungs and children hobbling in heavy braces. But this isn't that far in Canada's past — the country was only declared polio-free in 1994 — and in other parts of the world, polio is still a threat. But public health experts say it might not be much longer. "It's been a bit like a marathon. It's not a sprint. We're really near, we're getting there, but we're not quite there yet," said Dr. Anne Pham-Huy, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and vice-chair of Immunize Canada. Polio is a viral disease that mostly infects children. Around three-quarters of people who catch it show no symptoms, she said. Among people who do show symptoms, they're mostly non-specific things that could be mistaken for a cold or flu: fever, fatigue, nausea. But in about one in every 200 cases, it can cause muscle paralysis — sometimes permanently — or even death should respiratory muscles get paralyzed. View link » In the 1980s, there were 350,000 cases per year, according to Carol Pandak, director of Rotary International's polio program. Thanks to concerted efforts and the launch of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988, there were only 33 cases of wild polio in 2018, in just two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan. And just this week, the World Health Organization announced that it had eradicated the second of three poliovirus strains — meaning there's just one kind of wild polio left. "We've made tremendous progress," Pandak said. "And perhaps equally as important is that 18 million people who otherwise would have been paralyzed or died from polio are alive or walking today because of the global effort to eradicate polio."  Health workers travel from door to door, dispensing oral vaccine and marking the pinkie finger of everyone who got the dose, Pandak said. The oral vaccine is easy to dispense and doesn't have to be administered by a professional, but it has to be given several times in order to confer immunity. The vaccination programs are often organized into National Immunization Days, she said, where whole countries get their shots at once. It's hard, time-consuming work, but Rotary estimates that around 430 million children got vaccinated against polio in 2017 alone. "The first time you immunize a child against polio in some remote location, it is an extraordinary experience," Pandak said. "You feel that you and that child are the only two people on the planet." She still keeps a photo of her first patient, a little girl in India, in her desk drawer, she said. Vaccination, even in countries that don't have "wild polio" circulating in the environment, is still very important, as workers have to contend with another threat: vaccine-derived polio. Because the oral vaccine contains a weakened virus, vaccinated children can "shed" the virus in their stool, Pham-Huy said. In places with poor sanitation, other people might encounter the virus, and it can mutate after several encounters, potentially becoming dangerous again. If people aren't properly immunized, they might catch it, she said. There were 104 such cases of vaccine-derived polio around the world in 2018, according to the World Health Organization, significantly more than cases of wild polio. The Philippines recently embarked on a massive vaccination program as vaccine-derived polio cropped up there. But experts are careful to note that the vaccine doesn't cause polio. If everyone was properly vaccinated, they wouldn't catch the occasional, rare case of vaccine-derived polio. "It's an indication of low immunity," Pandak said. And it is rare: between 2000 and 2017, more than 10 billion doses of oral vaccine were given out, and there were fewer than 720 vaccine-derived polio cases, according to the World Health Organization. "We're talking billions and billions of doses that were provided," Pham-Huy said. "So this is a very rare risk." The injectable vaccine used in Canada doesn't have any live virus, and so it would be "impossible" for people to catch polio from the vaccine, Pham-Huy said.  Security concerns can make it tricky for workers to visit some areas, and some people also mistrust the polio vaccine. Ibrahim believes her parents were among them. "If someone like me existed back then when I was just one-year-old and spoke to my parents regarding vaccination and polio, I don't think I would have polio today," she said.
She's excited by the news that one more polio strain has been eliminated, and she looks forward to celebrating the day when the disease is a thing of the past. "This disease, polio, we're about to eradicate it. We're so close," she said. "It's honestly indescribable because I don't want another child going through what I've gone through." © 2019 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.  |
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