Daily Times

One step forward, two steps back and on goes the government’s tango dance to find sustainable momentum towards the ambitious goal of eradicating polio by 2026. Every single time it prepares itself for the last push, feeling confident in the gains made against the crippling virus, a more worrisome cluster emerges.

This year again, a constant uptick in cases prompted an emergency inoculation drive, which was surprisingly supported by religious scholars through a public address of associated myths. Through their endorsement, the state sought to strike at the reluctance hindering immunization efforts in critical areas. However, whatever success was to be achieved by their campaigns was instantly offset, but two deeply concerning instances.

On Wednesday, an attack claimed by TTP on a vaccination team in Bajaur district claimed the lives of one polio worker and one policeman escorting him. Separately in Jacobabad, another polio worker was allegedly abducted and raped as she was administering doses to children.

That the army chief has immediately risen to the occasion to pledge complete support to police and law enforcement authorities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a heartening development. The sacrifices rendered by these officials fighting as the first line of defence cannot be allowed to go in vain. But directing our efforts to fight militancy would mean we have still not acknowledged the multi-headed hydrangea. Polio workers are facing threats on all fronts: religion, militancy and now sexual predators.

No matter how determined our health workers may be, simply sitting back and sending them out in the open cannot work. Similarly futile is the vicious blame game wherein the authorities choose to pin the blame for rising incidence on the movement across the Western porous border.

Sooner rather than later, we would have to realise that ending this endemic, which has already begun to ring alarm bells in other parts of the world, requires active, concerted efforts. If the government is at fault for not seeing through the loopholes in the vaccination framework, the society is equally to be blamed for not being civilised enough to mould its own opinion and even worse, attack those who are trying to save its future. To borrow words from Zehra Nigah, “…Even jungles have some laws.” *