Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Efforts Slammed by WHO Group

http://blogs.wsj.com/

A global body issued a scathing report Monday on Pakistan’s efforts to eradicate polio, saying the country was the biggest obstacle to the goal of stopping world-wide transmission of the disease by the end of 2014.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, an international partnership of the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Unicef and national governments, said in the report that Pakistan’s anti-polio program was a “disaster” that threatened other efforts to eradicate the crippling disease.

“It continues to flounder hopelessly, as the virus flourishes,” the report said. “Home to 80% of the world’s polio cases, Pakistan is now the major stumbling block to global polio eradication.”

The report comes weeks after Pakistan reported the highest number of polio cases in 14 years. This year so far, 220 cases have been confirmed, compared with 93 cases in the whole of last year.

The Independent Monitoring Board, a group of expert advisers to the global body, wrote the report, which calls on Pakistan to immediately hand over its polio eradication program to the National Disaster Management Authority, a federal agency that usually handles natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes.

Government officials said the spike in cases this year is because of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people as a result of the army’s offensive against militants in North Waziristan, a tribal region near the border with Afghanistan where the Taliban banned vaccinations in 2012. Over 80% of polio cases in Pakistan this year are from the tribal areas and the adjacent Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

The Independent Monitoring Board said the displacement of people from insecure areas where vaccinations weren’t previously possible is an opportunity to inoculate them. The report added, however, that cases from Pakistan’s troubled northwest aren’t the only issue.

“Insecurity also cannot explain the polio cases that have occurred in Punjab, or excuse those that have occurred in numerous districts of Karachi, the country’s largest city and main port,” the report said.

Punjab, in the east of the country, is Pakistan’s richest and most populated province, while the giant port city of Karachi is home to at least 18 million people.

‘Home to 80% of the world’s polio cases, Pakistan is now the major stumbling block to global polio eradication.’ “It is clear that the level of political commitment, the extent of engagement of regional and local leaders, the quality of public health leadership and management, and the involvement of civil society are totally inadequate,” the report said. “Pakistan puts the entire global goal in jeopardy.”