Pakistani Taliban blamed for international spread of polio virus

http://centralasiaonline.com/

Pakistani militants' hard-line stance against vaccine has allowed the virus to migrate to Syria and could bring polio back to other places that had eradicated the disease.

Pakistani militants are being linked to polio's reappearance in Syria.

Syria, which had been polio-free since 1999, has a reported 13 polio cases so far this year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a November 12 statement. Genetic sequencing has shown that the strain of virus found in Deir al-Zor Province, Syria, originated from Pakistan. The reasons for blaming the militants are two-fold. First, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has been doing everything it can – from attacking and sometimes killing vaccination team members, or threatening parents and their children – to stop Pakistanis in the tribal region from getting the oral polio vaccine (OPV). That campaign has left 1m FATA children vulnerable to the disease, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) Polio Officer Dr. Muhammand Shoiab said. "Taliban militants are responsible for crippling 43 children in FATA in 2013 and are likely responsible for infecting children in foreign countries" now that the strain has gone beyond Pakistan’s borders, Shoiab said, adding that the 43 FATA children could all have been saved had they been vaccinated. Second, militants who receive training in Pakistan can pick up the virus and carry it wherever they go afterward. "Militants have a history of transporting virus to foreign countries," Dr. Mushtaq Khan of Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif's Polio Cell said. "The virus often infects children under 5 years old, but it can stay in faecal matter of adults, and then [flies can transmit the virus] to children." "So the argument by the Syrian government blaming the virus transmission on the militants who allegedly went from Pakistan to fight alongside rebels isn't misplaced," Mushtaq said, referring to comments by Syrian Minister of Social Affairs Kindah al-Shammat, who in media reports has blamed jihadists for bringing the virus into Syria.

TTP allows polio virus to survive

TTP militants have a long history of hampering Pakistan's anti-polio efforts, saying the vaccine is a Western ploy to keep the Muslim population from growing because, the TTP says, the OPV can sterilise those who receive it. In the past year or so, the Taliban have increased efforts to stop the administration of the vaccine, assassinating 30 health workers and policemen who were guarding vaccination teams in KP and Karachi since December 2012. The government has urged the Taliban to end their attacks against vaccinators and to stop terrorising the public and endangering children who go unvaccinated, but they have not relented, WHO Emergency Co-ordinator for Polio Eradication in Pakistan Dr. Elias Durry said. Although the Taliban's opposition to the OPV violates the tenets of Islam, convincing the public to defy the violent militants is difficult, religious scholar Mufti Inamullah Shah told Central Asia Online. "According to Islamic injunctions, we are bound to safeguard our children against diseases," he said. "All parents want to protect their children against disabilities, but they are afraid of the Taliban." Because of the TTP's fierce opposition to the OPV, Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio is still endemic. The other two countries are Nigeria (with 51 reported cases this year) and Afghanistan (9). Pakistan has reported 62 cases this year, already surpassing the total for all of 2012.

Ramifications of polio in Syria

With polio's reappearance in Syria, WHO fears the malady could spread across the Middle East. Medics detected a virus, closely linked to the one in Syria, in Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territories over the past year, it said. In response, the group has stepped up efforts to respond should the virus appear elsewhere. Vaccination campaigns are planned to cover 22m children in seven countries and territories, AFP reported earlier in November. Children in impoverished or war-torn areas, such as FATA and Syria, are especially vulnerable to contracting polio, Durry said. "The role of a few endemic countries in reinfection is dangerous," he said, adding that no country is safe as long as the virus circulates somewhere in the world.

Pakistan is working to contain further spread of the virus.

"We are taking measures to prevent the virus from being transmitted outside our borders," Mushtaq said, noting that the government has instructed provincial governments to set up permanent vaccination counters at airports' international departure lounges to vaccinate everybody against the virus.