ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities on Monday kicked off a nationwide weeklong campaign to vaccinate over 45.8 million children against the poliovirus disease, with the country’s caretaker health minister urging masses to cooperate with polio workers for a safer and healthier future for their children.
Pakistan aims to vaccinate over 45.8 million children below the age of five during the second anti-polio campaign of this year, which is being held from February 26 to March 3. The vaccination drive is scheduled to be held from March 2-6 in the 33 districts of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province bordering Afghanistan.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where the poliovirus, which causes paralysis and can be a life-threatening disease, is endemic.
“Over 400,000 of our polio heroes are knocking at your doors for a bright and healthy future,” Pakistan’s Caretaker Health Minister Dr. Nadeem Jan said in a video message.
“Cooperate with them because eliminating polio is our national, moral, religious and social obligation,” he added.
This is the second nationwide campaign against the disease after poliovirus was detected in sewage samples from 19 Pakistani districts in January and in 126 sewage samples in 2023. The first campaign this year was held from January 8-14 in which over 43 million children were vaccinated, according to official figures.
Pakistan’s efforts to contain polio have often been met with opposition, especially in the country’s northwestern KP province, where militants have carried out attacks against vaccinators and the security teams guarding them. Many believe in the conspiracy theory that polio vaccines are part of a plot by Western outsiders to sterilize Pakistan’s population.
Pakistani masses’ doubts regarding polio campaigns were exacerbated in 2011 when the US Central Intelligence Agency set up a fake hepatitis vaccination program to gather intelligence on former Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.