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Karachi is once again mobilising its army of 26,000 polio workers and thousands of police escorts – this time with an aim to vaccinate over 2.5 million children within six days. The resolve to launch this Herculean feat is impressive, and also quite familiar. For over three decades, in some form, Pakistan has run this machine yet still hasn’t crossed the finish line that Nigeria and India reached years ago.
The reasons are not mysterious or unsolvable and neither does funding seem to be an issue. Pakistan has spent close to ten billion dollars on polio since 2011, most of it from international donors. Yet every campaign is followed by missed children, often from the same households, over and over again. The area maps meant to guide polio workers have remained outdated for ages, as have the door-to-door lists used between drives. Meanwhile, the actual foundation of population immunity – routine immunisation through the regular vaccination system – keeps being disrupted as staff and funding get pulled away to run shorter drives.
The teams spearheading these drives also comprise district administrators and the police rather than healthcare professionals, who would be far better placed to assess the efficacy of the system. When polio cases dip due to regular fluctuations, officials treat it as a marker of success in press conferences and then fail to sustain the effort in the longer run. Additionally, another conspiracy theory has been circulating after a viral claim surfaced that Jeffrey Esptein, a convicted child sex offender, donated to Pakistan’s polio eradication programme. With many questions unanswered, parents are left battling a dilemma against many baseless claims – such as the vaccine involving genetic engineering.
The shadow of such conspiracies magnifies under improper governmental administration and transparency. The state is slowly losing the trust of the public, and the children are left to suffer every single time.
