PESHAWAR: Government officials and relatives said a lack of awareness and coordination and a communication gap among officials were responsible for the two latest cases of polio found in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s remote Bajaur area earlier this month.
Pakistan’s tribal regions, including Bajaur, were only last year merged into the political and legal mainstream of the country. Access to health care in these areas has been patchy, if not absent, for decades.
Earlier this month, the National Institute of Health found two new cases of the polio virus in a three-year-old boy Abdul Rehman and a six-and-a-half-year-old girl Nabila. Both belong to Jaba Manzai, a dusty village in the Bajaur tribal district.
A three-day polio drive is currently underway across the tribal areas and will conclude on Wednesday.
“Every confirmed polio case from Bajaur is proof in itself that a [coordination and communication] gap exists and there is need for improving the quality of campaign,” said Kamran Ahmed Afridi, a coordinator at the local Emergency Operation Center.
He said task teams and syndicates had already been notified and would identify gaps and propose counter strategies.
Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, that suffers endemic polio, a childhood virus that can cause paralysis or death.
Efforts to eradicate the disease have been undermined by government mismanagement as well as opposition from militants who see immunization as a foreign ploy to sterilize Muslim children and consider polio workers to be Western spies.
In just one attack in 2015, a suicide bomber killed 15 people outside a vaccination center in the southwestern city of Quetta.
Wazir Khan Safi, a surgeon in Bajaur, said parental refusal to vaccinate was also behind the latest cases of polio.
“We have reports that there are four children in that particular home [where the two new cases were found] and their parents avoided administering polio drops to three of their kids,” Safi said, adding that the family had reprimanded and mistreated polio workers in the past.
In Pakistan, suspicion of immunization drives was compounded by the hunt for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 2001 attacks on the United States. A Pakistani doctor, Shakeel Afridi, has been accused of using a fake vaccination campaign to collect DNA samples that the US Central Intelligence Agency is believed to have used to track down bin Laden.
Bin Laden was killed in a covert raid by US special forces in 2011 in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where he had been hiding.
Sultan Ibrahim, the father of the girl recently diagnosed with polio, said his daughter’s left leg was paralyzed.
“I never refused vaccination but at the same time I had no idea about the importance of anti-polio vaccination or drops,” he said, tearfully. “Sometimes, polio teams were not punctual in carrying out the campaign.”
“I am now ready to go every length to recover my daughter’s health,” he added.
About the ongoing three-day polio drive, Muhammad Usman Mehsud, the top administrator of Bajaur, said strict directives had been issued to district administration and health department officials to depute polio teams at security check posts, entry and exit points of main towns and bus stands to vaccinate every child under the age of five.
“Any delinquency on the part of any officer will be dealt with sternly,” he said.
According to Afridi at the Emergency Operation Center, a total of 4,120 teams comprising 3,803 mobile teams, 227 fixed and 90 transit mobile teams had been assigned to vaccinate a total of 884,771 children below the age of five years across the tribal areas.
Last year, the WHO said the polio situation had stagnated in Pakistan, with eight cases reported until November 2018, the same number as was reported for the whole of 2017.
“We are facing acute shortage of female polio workers.” said Mehsud, “who can play a highly significant role of going inside every home to make sure that no child is left unvaccinated.”
Awareness, communication gap behind new polio cases in Pakistani tribal areas
Awareness, communication gap behind new polio cases in Pakistani tribal areas
- Parental refusal to vaccinate also part of the problem
- Three-day polio drive ongoing in tribal regions
Pakistan combing for perpetrators after deadly Balochistan attacks
- Pakistan has been battling a Baloch separatist insurgency for decades, with frequent armed attacks on security forces, foreign nationals and non-locals
- Militants stormed banks, jails, police stations and military installations, killing 31 civilians and 17 security personnel, the Balochistan chief minister says
QUETTA: Pakistan forces were hunting on Sunday for the separatists behind a string of coordinated attacks in restive Balochistan province, with the government vowing to retaliate after more than 190 people were killed in two days.
Around a dozen sites remained sealed off, with troops combing the area a day after militants stormed banks, jails, police stations and military installations, killing at least 31 civilians and 17 security personnel, according to the chief minister of Balochistan province.
At least 145 attackers were also killed, he added, while an official told AFP that a deputy district commissioner had been abducted.
That figure includes more than 40 militants that security forces said were killed on Friday.
Mobile internet service across the province has been jammed for more than 24 hours, while road traffic is disrupted and train services suspended.
After being rocked by explosions, typically bustling Quetta lay quiet on Sunday, with major roads and businesses deserted, and people staying indoors out of fear.
Shattered metal fragments and mangled vehicles litter some roads.
"Anyone who leaves home has no certainty of returning safe and sound. There is constant fear over whether they will come back unharmed," Hamdullah, a 39-year-old shopkeeper who goes by one name, told AFP in Quetta.
The chief minister, Sarfraz Bugti, told a press conference in Quetta that all the districts under attack were cleared on Sunday.
"We are chasing them, we will not let them go so easily," he said.
"Our blood is not that cheap. We will chase them until their hideouts."
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the province's most active militant separatist group, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement sent to AFP.
The group, which the United States has designated a terrorist organisation, said it had targeted military installations as well as police and civil administration officials in gun attacks and suicide bombings.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, who flew to Quetta late Saturday to join funerals, claimed without offering any evidence that the attackers were supported by India.
"We will not spare a single terrorist involved in these incidents," he said.
In a press conference on Sunday, Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif likewise claimed the attackers enjoyed links to India and pledged to "completely eliminate these terrorists".
India denied any involvement.
"We categorically reject the baseless allegations made by Pakistan, which are nothing but its usual tactics to deflect attention from its own internal failings," said foreign ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal on Sunday.
'BROAD DAYLIGHT'
Pakistan has been battling a Baloch separatist insurgency for decades, with frequent armed attacks on security forces, foreign nationals and non-local Pakistanis in the mineral-rich province bordering Afghanistan and Iran.
Saturday's attacks came a day after the military said it killed 41 insurgents in two separate operations in the province.
The insurgents released a video showing group leader Bashir Zaib leading armed units on motorcycles during the attack.
Another clip claimed to show the abducted senior official from Nushki district.
In another district, militants freed at least 30 inmates from a district jail, while seizing firearms and ammunition. They also ransacked a police station and took ammunition with them.
"It was one of the most audacious attacks in the region in recent years, as unlike other attacks, it took place in broad daylight," Abdul Basit at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore told AFP.
"It is alarming that militants, with coordinated manpower and strategic acumen, have now reached the provincial capital," he added.
Several of the BLA's videos featured women insurgents, while Defence Minister Asif said at least one of the suicide bombers was a young woman.
"They continue to showcase women strategically in high-visibility attacks," Basit said.
Pakistan's poorest province and largest by landmass, Balochistan lags behind the rest of the country in almost every index, including education, employment and economic development.
Baloch separatists accuse Pakistan's government of exploiting the province's natural gas and abundant mineral resources, without benefiting the local population. The government denies this.
The BLA has intensified attacks on Pakistanis from other provinces working in the region in recent years, as well as foreign energy firms.
Last year, the separatists attacked a train with 450 passengers on board, sparking a deadly two-day siege.
