Islamabad: Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan continue to be in the news for all the wrong reasons.
First, they gained notoriety for being virtually governed by the militants and now, they have turned out to be real spoiler for the nationwide fight against polio.
A look at the statistics compiled by the Prime Minister’s Polio Monitoring and Coordination Cell shows nearly all of the nationwide polio cases reported this year came from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and the adjoining Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Until now this year, 39 children in the country have tested positive for the crippling disease and 87 per cent of them (33) are from the northwestern mountainous, restive region.
In the last week, seven new wild polio cases were reported in the country, six from Fata (three each from North Waziristan and Khyber agencies) and one from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Peshawar).
That brought the year 2013 count of wild polio cases to 39, all type1, compared to 47 cases during the same time period last year from 14 districts, towns and tribal areas.
According to a relevant official, the national immunisation days (NIDs) have been completed in 149 districts, towns and tribal agencies and are in progress in 11 districts and towns.
However, North and South Waziristan agencies in Fata remained inaccessible due to the militants ban on vaccination, which has been in place since June 2012. Also, NIDs couldn’t be initiated in Awaran district in Balochistan due to the destruction caused by the recent earthquake.
Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency, too, didn’t have NIDs first due to volatile security situation and second due to the staggered and late implementation of the last supplementary immunisation activities (SIAs).
As stated by the official, a total of 25,235 children were screened during the spot surveys following the September-October NIDs in all provinces and regions.
Of them, 24,106 (96 per cent) were confirmed as vaccinated (through finger marking).
“The rate of children found finger marked was 97 per cent in Punjab, 94 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 92 per cent in Fata, 93 per cent in Balochistan, 92 per cent in Gilgit-Baltistan and 97 per cent in Islamabad during the recent spot surveys.” Also, the assessment of 75 lots (union councils) through Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) shows 45 (60 per cent) had acceptable quality (pass), 23 (31 per cent) intermediate quality (needing improvement) and seven (nine per cent) lots poor quality (failure).
