Polio monitoring board meeting may put Pakistan in trouble

By Ikram Junaidi

Although, at the moment, the government has been giving most of its attention to issues of sit-ins in the federal capital and the floods which have affected a vast area of the country, the real danger has started looming as a meeting of the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) for Polio has been scheduled for September 30.

IMB is the board which suggested international travel restrictions on Pakistan and World Health Organisation (WHO) implemented it. Most alarmingly, Pakistani government has failed to implement the recommendations of IMB. However, the National Coordinator for Polio Eradication Ayesha Raza Farooq claims that recommendations of IMB will be implemented before the meeting and she is prepared to defend Pakistan’s case there.

It is pertinent to mention that IMB works on behalf of the international donor agencies and it issues reports regarding performance of the countries after every six months. In November 2012, IMB recommended that travel restrictions should be imposed on Pakistan and finally those recommendations were implemented on May 5.

On June 2, IMB released its recommendations for Pakistan, in which Prime Minister’s Polio Cell was declared a ‘shadow boxing entity’. IMB recommended establishing a new entity named ‘Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) for Polio’ before July 1, 2014. It was recommended that a new entity should be dealt by both the president and the prime minister.

IMB, in its report, further stated that, in 2011, the Pakistani government had promised that by December 2014, the country would become polio-free, but that promise was not kept. IMB report further stated that Pakistan infected Syria, Iraq, West Bank and Gaza with polio virus.A Ministry of National Health Services official said unfortunately polio was not among the priorities of the government.

“In the season of dengue, not only isolation wards are established in hospitals but emergency is declared in all provinces, especially Punjab. Teachers are called in schools, even during summer vacations, to see if there is stagnant water in which mosquitoes breed,” he said.

“However, I have never heard about any meeting chaired by the prime minister on polio. I remember that, during the tenure of PPP, at least the government was serious about the health sector and used to have meetings regarding polio twice a week. Special Adviser to Prime Minister Shahnaz Wazir Ali and Azra Fazal Pechuho used to participate in those meetings,” he said.

“I feel that there is no leadership and nobody is ready to take the responsibility regarding polio cases, which were only 58 in 2012 and reached to 146 within just eight months of 2014. There will be a low transmission season for polio from November to March, which will be the best time to eradicate the virus,” the official said.

“I fear that in the two-day meeting with IMB in London, it will become difficult to defend the case of Pakistan. It seems that only international pressure can force our rulers to take steps for the eradication of this virus,” he added.

“IMB recommended that EOCs should be established before July, but the government has not bothered to implement the recommendations, due to which Pakistan will face embarrassment in the meeting,” he said.

“It seems that travel restrictions will be lifted from Syria and Cameroon, and Pakistan will be the only country with travel restrictions, because around 90 per cent of the cases, reported from all over the world, belong to Pakistan,” he said.

Technical Coordinator of Provincial Polio Cell Sindh Shahnaz Wazir Ali, who was also the focal person for the prime minister during the PPP-led government, told Dawn that issue of polio should be taken very seriously.

“Although Taliban imposed a ban on polio campaign in Waziristan, we tried to vaccinate children through religious scholars and private persons. I and Azra Fazal used to travel all over the country to ensure massive polio campaigns, due to which polio cases reduced and reached to only 58 in 2012,” she said.

“During PPP’s tenure, President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani also took interest in eradication of polio. Although it was our idea to get loan from Islamic Development Bank (IDB), PC-I for loan could not be approved for many months in the tenure of PML-N,” she said.

Ms Shahnaz said the government should raise problems of IDPs and military operation in Waziristan in the IMB meeting because the number of reported polio cases will further increase in the coming days.

National Coordinator for Polio Eradication Ayesha Raza Farooq told Dawn that she defended Pakistan’s case in the last IMB meeting and was planning to do it again.

“We could not hold polio campaigns in Waziristan for two and half years. Moreover, rains and IDPs have further increased the problem. I will tell the members of the IMB that the military operation has brought a new hope for Pakistan, because 80 per cent cases of polio are reported from Fata. Now it will be possible to hold polio campaigns there,” she said.

Ms Farooq said although IMB recommended that EOCs should be established before July, it is not easy to take that sort of steps.

“Notifications for the establishment of EOCs have been issued by the provinces, however, the notification at the federal level could not be issued because of the situation in Islamabad. It has been decided that EOCs will be established before IMB’s meeting,” she claimed.