ISLAMABAD: The government is intensifying its campaign to eradicate polio at the earliest, the Senate was told today.

Pakistan, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, are the world’s last three countries where polio continues to cripple children. It was the major contributor to the global total of polio cases in 2013.

The campaign to eradicate the disease in Pakistan however has been sabotaged by assassination attempts on vaccination workers by terrorists. The use of a fake polio immunisation campaign to confirm the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden ahead of his killing by US forces in 2011 fuelled suspicion that the campaign is a front for CIA espionage.

Despite the setbacks, the government is determined to escalate its anti-polio campaign and eradicate it once and for all from Pakistan.
It is now using Muslim clerics to persuade so-called ‘refusal families’ who believe the vaccination is ‘un-Islamic’ to allow their children to be immunised.

Militancy, especially in the FATA and North Waziristan areas, has deepened resistance to immunisation and left many children at risk.
But Minister of State for National Health Services Saira Afzal Tarar told the Senate today that the government’s campaign is now being stepped-up. A total of 18 polio supplementary immunization activities were conducted last year in which 267 million children were vaccinated and the Prime Minister's polio monitoring cell has been further strengthened.

“The prime minister is committed to eliminating polio from the country,” she said.