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Militant violence, anti-vaccination conspiracies and religious extremists have long defeated the will to eradicate once and for all the disabling polio disease in Pakistan.
But now, the vaccination teams of some 220 million people in the country of Southeast Asia are facing a new hurdle: the false markers.
Polio workers said that parents who suspected the government's vaccination campaigns had acquired special markers used by health workers to place a colored dot on children's left fingers after vaccination.
Health workers say that parents opposed to vaccines mark their children's pinkies to make it look like they've been vaccinated when in fact they were not. Because of the deception, the vaccination teams ignore the children to be vaccinated, thus preventing the elimination of the disease in the country.
With the disappearance of wild polio cases in Nigeria in recent years, Pakistan and Afghanistan are currently the only countries in the world where new cases of poliomyelitis have been discovered.
The question of false markers in Pakistan highlights the various obstacles that prevent Pakistan from eliminating polio – an infantile virus that causes limb deformity, paralysis and even death.
Intense vaccination campaigns in recent years have significantly reduced the number of polio cases in Pakistan, with only a dozen cases registered last year.
Militant Stronghold
But that number has risen to 45 cases this year. Of these, 35 were found in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a poor and religiously conservative region that was once a stronghold of militant groups like al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.
Many residents of the province, located along the porous border with Afghanistan, are wary of polio vaccine. Clerics and conservative Islamist militants claimed that it was a Western plot to hurt or sterilize children.
Dr. Imtiaz Ali Shah, head of the provincial government's polio surveillance cell in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, warned that the false polio markers were the last threat in the fight against polio.
"Our immunization teams first ask parents if their children are vaccinated," says Shah. "To confirm this, we check if the children have marks on their fingers.If this is the case, it means that they were vaccinated.But we then realized that some parents had applied false marks. on their children before the polio teams arrive in their areas ".
Shah said the suspicions were raised when 17 of the 45 polio cases recorded this year are from the same city – Bannu – a city of 50,000 in the north-west of the country.
In the past, the city has been the scene of deadly attacks against polio workers and it is known that activists are active in the region.
Shah brought a team of health officials to Bannu to see if the children with finger marks had been vaccinated.
"When we checked some kids, we discovered that they were not immune," he says.
Shah says the provincial government in Bannu is planning plans to solve the problem of pinky's fake brands. In the past, polio teams reported to the police from parents who refused to immunize their children.
But since then, polio workers have stopped filing complaints with the authorities. He also said that the government has launched a media campaign targeting parents, religious and teachers to dispel the myths about vaccinations.
In April, a vaccination campaign in the province was thwarted by widespread panic caused by rumors that children would have fainted or vomited after being vaccinated.
As rumors spread, thousands of panicked parents rushed their children to hospitals in the provincial capital, Peshawar, forcing health facilities to declare emergencies. The rumors turned out to be wildly exaggerated.
Public health studies conducted in Pakistan have shown that maternal illiteracy and low parental knowledge about vaccines – as well as about poverty and rural residence – are the main factors to consider. factors that most often influence if parents vaccinate their children against the polio virus.
Mistrust of Western governments funding immunization programs is also fueling anti-vaccine propaganda, particularly after the CIA reportedly organized a fake anti-hepatitis vaccination campaign in 2011 to confirm the location. Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who resided there. Abottabad, where he was killed by the US Seal.
Since then, some religious have even published fatwas saying that children who become paralyzed or die of polio are "martyrs" because they refused to be trapped by a "Western plot".
Pakistani activists also announced that vaccines manufactured in the West contained pork fat or alcohol, two substances banned in Islam.
Activists in Pakistan have kidnapped, beaten and murdered dozens of vaccinators or their armed police escorts in recent years in an effort to end local polio campaigns.
Written by Frud Bezhan with a report by Daud Khattak, editor-in-chief of Radio Mashaal
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