Peshawar: Polio hero born from personal tragedy

"My heart bleeds when I see my son crawling on the ground, unable to walk and play with his brother and sister despite his urge to stand on his feet ," said Samina, mother of two-year's old Fahad, a polio victim from the Khyber Agency. Fahad's family lives in Jalozai Camp in abject conditions along with thousands of other internally displaced persons from Khyber, Mohmand and Bajaur Agencies in shabby tents without any proper sanitation and other basic facilities. Samina in her early twenties said that "For one week, we did not know that he had been affected by polio and thought that he could not walk due to weakness caused by severe temperature," Later, my husband took him to a doctor in Peshawar, where it was confirmed that he had been affected by Polio." "Gone are the days when I used to enjoy life and was a lively person. I haven't laughed since my child was hit by polio," says Fahad's farther, Muhammad Usman, adding that, "No words can describe my feelings when I watch my two years old son cannot walk and enjoy life." A driver by profession with meagre economic resources, 25 year's old Usman took Fahad to various doctors and spiritual healers for treatment, which has no known cure. Usman said that he lives in a mud house at tehsil Bara with 35 family members adding that he has no income sources as businesses in Khyber Agency were badly affected due to on-going conflict in the region. He said that Polio teams had not visited Bara since 2007 and maintained that lack of awareness about routine and polio vaccination resulted in Fahad ending up as a Polio victim. Usman, now acts as an advocate for polio eradication and actively participates in awareness raising activities, working to prevent hundreds of young children from the fate his own child has suffered. Speaking to community members at the Jalozai camp, Usman said that "In my neighbourhood, we have seven polio victims, but nobody took pain to inform others of the miseries of polio, had they informed others of the disease, it would have been prevented".