The news on the front of Pakistan’s battle against polio remains unpleasant. According to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) figures, so far this year there have been as many as 27 cases of wild polio - all of them in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Briefing journalists the other day, chair of the WHO’s international emergency committee, Helen Rees, said her organisation was “very concerned” that this number has been higher than last year, and that “the ongoing situation continues to require that a public health emergency of international concern should be applied.”

It is unclear whether the number she mentioned is reflective of a rise in the incidence of this crippling, contagious disease afflicting children, in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Nonetheless, reports appearing in the national press every now and then show this country is still some distance away from being polio-free despite running regular vaccination campaigns. The two major factors undermining these immunization drives are ignorance and poverty. The Taliban and other extremist elements have been putting up stiff resistance to the immunization programme claiming it to be a Western ploy to sterile children so as to prevent the Muslim population from increasing. They have killed several health workers and their guards. As a result, the virus survives mostly in the tribal belt, Khyber-Peshawar corridor, Quetta as well as Karachi - in the last two places because many of the people displaced by military operations in the Taliban-infested tribal areas took refuge there. Quetta also hosts Afghan refugee camps, and hence is in a more vulnerable position. Another source of trouble is unhygienic conditions in big cities’ poor neighbourhoods.

Pakistan has made significant progress towards polio eradication, but as the WHO’s findings show we still have a lot to worry about. What needs to be done is obvious. Immunization efforts must concentrate on high-risk areas, backed by mass awareness campaigns to convince the people that polio vaccination is safe. All parents want their children to be healthy and strong. It would be helpful also to seek Afghanistan’s cooperation for the elimination of poliovirus. And considering that the virus keeps getting detected in urban centers’ poor sections where such bare necessities of life as clean drinking water and sewage facilities are unavailable, no less important is the need to address these issues in an effective and sustained manner. Local and provincial governments ought to play a more proactive role than has been the case so far. They owe that to the people and also to the country’s international image. Pakistan has repeatedly come under criticism for what the WHO head described as a public health emergency of international concern. Already, it is mandatory for Pakistanis travelling abroad to take polio drops and produce a certificate to that effect. Be that as it may, those concerned must do whatever it takes to rid this country of polio for the sake of well-being of their own people.