PESHAWAR: Another polio case has been reported in an 18-months-old female child from the Akakhel area of Bara in Khyber Agency.
The government’s failure to reach out to unvaccinated children has taken up the total number of polio cases in Khyber to 45.
Khyber Agency has the highest number of reported polio cases after the restive North Waziristan Agency.
Earlier
this month, Pakistan broke its 13-year-old record of 199 polio cases
with the confirmation of eight more cases on October 3. Official data
moreover shows that an overwhelming 96 per cent of polio cases so far
reported were found among the Pashto-speaking population of Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa and Fata.
According to
data exclusively available with Dawn, out of these 96 per cent, residents of North Waziristan Agency's Wazir tribe accounted for 34 per cent of the cases.
Explore — War on polio: Is it all spiraling out of control for Pakistan?
It
is pertinent to mention here that earlier in September, the Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa province had reported 25 polio cases this year and at least
five of them were scientifically proven to have originated in Fata.
Fata,
which has never been able to vaccinate its targeted population of
around nine million since the global polio eradication initiative began
in Pakistan in the mid 1990s, has become a real challenge for the
government and UN agencies, which are finding it extremely hard to
address the issue of reaching unvaccinated children and tackle
vaccination refusal cases.
Pakistan responsible for 80pc polio cases: WHO
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that
Pakistan is responsible for nearly 80 per cent of polio cases reported globally.
“The
situation is primarily due to a lack of access to children for
vaccination, largely owing to a continuing ban on immunisation imposed
by militants in the North and South Waziristan, and insecurity and
killing of polio workers in the field,” said a progress report.
“Pakistan
remains the greatest single risk to the achievement of global polio
eradication. Issues involving children’s access to immunisation and
safety of vaccinators must be resolved to ensure that the programme can
be completed,” said the report.