Polio cases reported in Karak, Bajaur

Two more polio cases reported from Karak district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Bajaur Agency were diagnosed on Sunday to raise the total number of polio cases to 35 this year. Both the kids were diagnosed with type-1 polio case. Senior officials of provincial Health Department confirmed that a 48-month old boy identified as Mohammad Asad, son of Mohammad Khalid, had been diagnosed with polio. He is the resident of Sultankhel village in Tor Dhand union council in Karak. An 18-month old baby girl identified as Nisa, daughter of Siraj Khan, was also found infected with the poliovirus. She belongs to Mulayano Koroona in Loi Mamond tehsil in Bajaur Agency. Mamond tehsil in Bajaur was once the stronghold of militants and foreign fighters. Before their expulsion from Bajaur in 2009 as a result of military operation launched by the Pakistani security forces, the militants had banned polio immunisation. The militants even killed Bajaur’s top Health Department official, Dr Abdul Ghani Khan, in 2007 for the heroic work he had done in the field of anti-polio campaign. He was on his way back to Khar town, the headquarters of Bajaur, after convincing reluctant parents to administer polio drops to their kids in Salarzai tehsil when his vehicle was blown up through an improvised explosive device (IED) reportedly planted by the militants. The government awarded him the prestigious civil award, Sitara-i-Imtiaz, posthumously in 2008 in recognition of his work. The health workers and international donors have been facing challenges in vaccination of kids against the crippling disease as clerics in most parts of the province and Fata have been campaigning against polio vaccination. They term it a conspiracy of the West to control birth rate in the Muslim world. Health experts, however, dispel this impression.