Daily Times

Sir: Polio is a contagious viral disease that in its most severe form causes paralysis, difficulty in breathing and sometimes death. It has caused many deaths in our country both of children and adults.

It is an emerging issue not only in our country but in our neighbouring country Afghanistan and Nigeria, making us the only three polio-endemic countries still battling with the disease. The fight for a polio-free world perhaps take a little long duration, keeping in view, the recent pessimistic report of the Global Eradication Initiative. Though type two and type three strands of the virus have been eradicated, type one has yet to be uprooted.

There have been reported just 25 cases in 2017 in the aforementioned countries. When it comes to polio in our country then the blame often falls on Afghanistan owing to the free movement of the people in the country while anti-polio cases remain difficult to be executed because of the outbreak of war in Afghanistan.

In Pakistan, most of the polio cases are reported in the province of Balochistan. Approximately 16,000 kids below the age of five are deprived of polio vaccines in the province as they are not present at home when the campaigns are conducted while 30-40 percent remains without vaccination due to ignorance and attacks on the polio workers.

In the recent days, two armed people riding on a motorbike opened fire to the polio workers where a female health worker was terribly injured when she was administering polio drops to the children in the provincial capital of Balochistan.

In another attack on a woman and her daughter, both polio workers has also raised multiple questions.

It is the duty of every individual to spread awareness about the disease among the common people so that our future generations are saved. What is important is to remove the misconceptions about polio vaccination. Why get carried away by misconceptions when knowing full well that the disease can cripple one forever and could even prove fatal.

ZEESHAN NASIR

Turbat,Kech

Published in Daily Times, January 2^nd 2019