Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Monday noted that polio vaccine hesitancy and refusals to vaccinate remain major challenges to Pakistan’s polio eradication efforts, particularly in major urban centers like Karachi and Hyderabad.
Launching a weeklong polio eradication campaign in Karachi—spanning Oct. 28-Nov. 3—he said it aimed to vaccinate 10.6 million children under the age of five across 30 districts of Sindh. He said it was unfortunate that such a large number of parents in Karachi and Hyderabad were reluctant to allow their children to receive the vaccines, noting that roughly 85 percent of all refusals in Sindh were from Karachi. To a question on how the government was addressing this, he said it had engaged parliamentarians, local council committees, and UC-level local bodies to support vaccination efforts.
Lamenting that of the 41 polio cases reported in Pakistan this year, 12 were from Sindh, he stressed that the current campaign’s success was essential to curbing the debilitating disease. As part of the current campaign, he said, 81,000 frontline workers would travel door-to-door to administer the vaccine, adding approximately 19,000 security personnel would be deployed to safeguard polio workers and ensure a smooth campaign. The current campaign spans all of Pakistan, with officials in all provinces vowing to ensure its success to curb the spread of the poliovirus.
Highlighting the threats faced by polio vaccinators, two policemen guarding a vaccination team were shot dead by militants in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s Orakzai district on Tuesday. In a resulting shootout, both attackers were also killed, said police.
According to the AFP news agency, Malik Sikandar, a senior police officer in Orakzai said the two militants had targeted the police team. “One policeman died at the scene while the second succumbed to injuries” en route to hospital, he told AFP. Other officers, he said, had then pursued the attackers and killed them as well as a local accomplice.
In a statement, President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attack on the polio team and expressed sorrow over the martyrdom of the policemen. “The police officers fought bravely and sent three terrorists to hell,” he said of the police response, and reiterated that the government was committed to eradicating polio from the country.
In a separate statement, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said the attack on the polio attack was an attack on the “safe future” of Pakistan and condemned the terrorist act.
Despite the poliovirus remaining endemic in only Pakistan and Afghanistan, vaccine refusal persists in the country, with at least 126 people killed and 201 injured in various attacks on healthcare workers since 2012.