PESHAWAR: Pakistani authorities have postponed a planned anti-polio vaccination campaign in the northwestern Kurram district, a senior health official said on Friday, citing a fragile security situation after weeks of deadly sectarian clashes in the region.
The development came as the South Asian country reported four new cases of the polio virus that brought the nationwide tally to 63 this year. Pakistan and the neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains an endemic.
Kurram, a former semi-autonomous tribal region bordering Afghanistan, has a long history of violent conflicts and the recent clashes between Shiite and Sunni communities, which began on Nov. 21, killed 133 people in the restive region.
Though a council of tribal elders, or jirgah, backed by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government, this month managed a ceasefire between the warring tribes, security situation remains fragile in the district where road closures have led to shortage of medicines and food.
“Yes, the anti-polio campaign in Kurram has been postponed delayed for now. After improvement in the security environment and reopening of roads, new dates for polio eradication campaign will be announced for the district,” Dr. Qaisar Khan, the Kurram district health officer (DHO), told Arab News.
Pakistan will launch its next anti-polio vaccination campaign from Dec. 16 till Dec. 22 to reach more than 44 million children under the age of five in 143 districts across the country, according to the official.
Pakistan is a Sunni-majority country, but Kurram has a large Shiite population, and the communities have clashed for decades. Provincial authorities last Sunday dispatched a batch of essential medicines via helicopter to the volatile district to ease the suffering of residents.
Pakistan’s chief health officer said on Nov. 10 an estimated 500,000 children had missed polio vaccination during the last countrywide inoculation drive.
This year, the country’s polio program has confirmed 26 polio cases in Balochistan, 18 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 17 in Sindh, and one each in Punjab and the federal capital of Islamabad.
Poliovirus, which can cause crippling paralysis particularly in young children, is incurable and remains a threat to human health as long as it has not been eradicated. Immunization campaigns have succeeded in most countries and have come close in Pakistan, but persistent problems remain.
In the early 1990s, Pakistan reported around 20,000 cases annually but in 2018 the number dropped to eight cases. Six cases were reported in 2023 and only one in 2021.
Pakistan’s polio program began in 1994 but efforts to eradicate the virus have since been undermined by vaccine misinformation and opposition from some religious hard-liners who say immunization is a foreign ploy to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western spies. Militant groups also frequently attack and kill members of polio vaccine teams.
In July 2019, a vaccination drive in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was thwarted after mass panic was created by rumors that children were fainting or vomiting after being immunized.
Public health studies in Pakistan have shown that a lack of knowledge about vaccines, together with poverty and rural residency, are also factors that commonly influence whether parents vaccinate their children against polio.