PAKISTAN The obstacle course of polio campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan

These are the only two countries in the world where the virus is still circulating and causing paralysis in children and newborns. The Taliban do not want to carry out door-to-door campaigns for fear of their own safety. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, workers continue to be victims of terrorist attacks and families are extremely cautious about vaccinations.

Kabul (/Agencies) – After learning of the news that the Taliban had suspended the polio vaccination campaign, Internal sources reported No official decree has been issued on the matter, and the Taliban Ministry of Public Health has expressed its willingness to carry out the vaccination campaign in mosques instead of the door-to-door approach that has been used so far.

However, health experts point out that this method could also jeopardize decades of efforts to eradicate the virus, and lead to a new epidemic, because most families living in remote areas cannot take their children to the mosque to receive the two doses of the vaccine. And the cases reported so far bear this out: of the 18 that were recorded this year (compared to 6 in 2023), 11 were detected in Kandahar, the power center of the Taliban leadership, where for years, due to restrictions on female operators, vaccinations have been carried out in the mosque.

“In the rest of Afghanistan there are no problems with female polio vaccinators, and in the areas where we have female workers, we have no cases,” some local operators told The Guardian. Before the Taliban reconquest in August 2021, women played a key role in the vaccination campaign, raising awareness among mothers and entering spaces forbidden to men. That is why women were allowed to continue working in the health sector, despite a series of other bans imposed by the Taliban on women’s activities. But in rural villages in the southern provinces bordering Pakistan, several women said they had been forced to quit because of restrictions on their freedom.

But this is not the only reason that forced the Taliban to review the vaccination campaign. “The reason for the postponement of the polio campaign is the problems with the way it is implemented,” explained one health official anonymously. “The current government has ordered us not to conduct door-to-door campaigns” for “security” reasons, the source continued. “In the south, particularly Kandahar, is where the Taliban leaders live, and they are worried that the campaigns could reveal their location to foreign threats.” Or to members of the Islamic State, who in recent years have repeatedly attacked Taliban power centers.

In the past, US intelligence services have also reportedly used fake vaccination campaigns to locate terrorists, fueling public distrust and the spread of fake news by religious leaders.

Pakistan is also the only country in the world, along with Afghanistan, where polio still circulates among children and infants. It spreads mainly through contaminated water and causes irreversible paralysis. Eighteen cases have been recorded this year, although there are probably many more. Most of them have been reported in Baluchistan, on the border with Iran and Afghanistan, and this is no coincidence. Despite the efforts of the Pakistani government, which last week recruited 286,000 health workers to vaccinate 33 million children under five, there have already been two attacks on health workers and the police personnel charged with protecting them.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban or TTP) fighters and Islamic State of Khorasan (IS-K) fighters based in regions along the Afghan border target polio teams because they suspect them of being government spies. Last week, unidentified gunmen killed a polio operator and a policeman, and police personnel responded by firing at them. called for a strikedemanding government intervention. More than 200 peoplemostly women, have been killed in recent years in attacks on polio campaign operators.

But it is often the families themselves who ask medical staff to record a vaccination as having been carried out that was never carried out due to mistrust of vaccines. According to a study of the population of Peshawar, for example, 79% of parents did not want to vaccinate their children because they feared that ingredients prohibited by religion might be present.