Vaccines get past Taliban,
finally By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Over 30,000 children
in the remote Tirah area of the Khyber Agency,
part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(FATA) in Northern Pakistan, have waited four
years for protection from polio, a viral disease
that is sometimes referred to as "infantile
paralysis" due to its crippling effects on
children.
A massive government and civil
society effort through the month of September
finally began to reverse the trend that had kept
the children of Tirah, along with hundreds of
thousands in the greater FATA area, under the
shadow of polio.
Up until this year,
children in all seven FATA agencies have been the
worst victims of the Taliban's ban on the oral
polio vaccination (OPV), which the organization
claims was a ploy by the United States to render
the recipients impotent and infertile, thus
strangling the growth of
the Muslim population.
On June 20 the
outlawed Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP) banned
vaccinations in North Waziristan, putting 161,000
at risk of contracting the preventable childhood
disease.
A week later, the TTP in the
adjacent South Waziristan province imposed a ban
on numerous vaccinations that rendered 157,000
children vulnerable to eight preventable childhood
ailments - polio, measles, diphtheria, hepatitis,
meningitis, pertussis, influenza and pneumonia.
"Anyone found involved in
vaccination-related activities was dealt with
sternly," TTP Spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan said a
statement, adding that the responsibility rested
with those who advocated for any kind of
vaccination.
Not even professional health
workers were spared if they were found to be in
violation of the ban.
"Due to the
Taliban's barbarism, such as beheading soldiers
and local residents on charge of spying, stoning
alleged 'sinners' [such as adulterers] to death
and targeted assassinations, the Taliban have
spread their message about the vaccinations loud
and clear," explained FATA Director of Health Dr
Fawad Khan.
Khan said that more than 6,000
FATA health workers had been directed to stay away
from vaccine-related work.
Earlier this
month officials mounted an offensive against the
ban. The government enlisted a local NGO, the
National Research and Development Foundation, and
religious scholars to hold talks with the outlawed
jihadist outfit Ansar ul Islam (AI) to negotiate
the terms of a vaccination programme. The NGO
began facilitating the vaccination on September 4,
an upbeat Dr Aftab Akbar Durrani, social sector
secretary of the FATA, told IPS. He added that
AI's cooperation had enabled 95% of the children
in the Tirah area to receive the vaccination.
"It is a major breakthrough, as many
efforts to vaccinate children in the
Taliban-controlled areas had failed," officials
told the English-language Dawn newspaper,
crediting the organization with protecting 32,641
children from polio. Officials added that 11,626
children also received the vaccine against
measles, while another 3,889 newborns and
month-old infants were vaccinated against five
other ailments between September 4 and 6.
"Ansar ul-Islam and religious leaders
attached to the group understand that the
poliovirus can cause lifelong disability so they
are ready to support the initiative," according to
officials. Only four families refused to vaccinate
their children, but efforts are underway to
convince them otherwise.
"Ansar ul-Islam
played a vital role in countering community
refusals," officials told IPS.
Fifty
percent of children in Bara, a town in Khyber
Agency, had not received the oral polio vaccine
(OPV) since October 2009, owing to an ongoing
operation against militants in the area.
Officials developed a new strategy to
reach the inaccessible children in FATA, which
included working in "collaboration with scouts
(who) carried out door-to-door visit with the help
of local vaccinators". Durrani told Dawn that
aggressive efforts were underway to ensure
immunization of all 900,000 target children in
FATA.
"We are administering OPV to the
displaced children of Waziristan in the adjacent
districts of Bannu, Tank and Dera Ismail Khan
where they live in rented houses or with their
relatives," he said.
He said that more
than 25,000 displaced children from Orakzai Agency
had been vaccinated in the nearby Hangu district,
while 50,000 children In Jalozai had also received
the OPV.
"Displacement has been proving a
blessing in disguise for the displaced children,
who are getting protection against eight
vaccine-preventable ailments through
immunization," Durrani said.
A three-part
campaign throughout September saw the immunization
of 600,000 children in FATA while 300,000 were
still inaccessible.
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