generalspeaking

Suffer The Children 

"It's not like a pot of boiling water where you see bubbles coming from everywhere, but there is steam coming out from specific areas", said Dr. Elias Durry, using a peculiar metaphor for the growing alarm over the outbreaks of polio in Pakistan, from his perspective as emergency co-ordinator for polio eradication in Pakistan for the World Health Organization.



In North Waziristan, health workers are stationed at checkpoints protected by the army. There they vaccinate children driving by. But because of the threats levelled against health workers by Islamic militants who claim the vaccinations are methods by which the West impairs the children's future fertility prospects, or that the vaccines are meant to deliver deadly pathogens, parents are fearful of retribution should they drive their children to these vaccination checkpoints.

"I can afford to bring the vaccine for my children, but what answer will I give the Taliban if they recover the vaccine bag from my possession?" asked one father of three young children to someone enquiring why he hasn't seen that his children have been vaccinated against polio. (Destroy the bag someone might mutter, but it's another metaphor.) There are many other parents in North Waziristan's tribal area fearful of the threat to their children's future from polio, but equally fearful of the results that would befall them should word go out that they succumbed.

Pakistan is one of three countries where polio is endemic; the others are Afghanistan and Nigeria which suffer the same problems. It had 198 confirmed cases of polio in 2011 representing the highest number of affected children of any country worldwide. But through a concentrated vaccination program supported by the United Nations that number was brought down to 58.

But now new polio cases are being identified in the North Waziristan area and government health officials are concerned that outbreaks could spread to other parts of the country if left unchecked.

Health officials had committed to the immunization of 34-million children across the nation. They have mostly succeeded, but 1.5-million children have not been reached because of the severe security threats Two powerful Pakistani Taliban leaders have banned vaccinators from North and South Waziristan the past year. Taliban gunmen have killed over a dozen vaccination workers and police guards.

People like Syed Wali, the man who spoke of fearing the Taliban response if he bought serum to vaccinate his three children by smuggling it in for that purpose from Peshawar, are conflicted over whether or not they will take the risks involved. On the one hand risking their children's health; on the other hand theirs and their children's lives by deadly retributive assaults.

Unsanitary conditions provide an opportunity for the polio virus to infect children. It attacks their nerves and is capable of paralyzing them, and even killing them. The morbid virus can spread widely unnoticed, before it begins to mount its deadly effects on the children infected. Confirmed polio cases have been identified in the Khyber tribal area and the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Punjab.

Al-Qaeda linked terrorists have done their best to hamper efforts for vaccination in Somalia where the worst polio outbreak in the world has occurred, with 108 cases so far this year, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative website. Islamic extremists, in their fury at the West and anything that appears to be symbolic of the West seem quite comfortable consigning innocent children to sickness and death.

Labels: Child Abuse, Health, Islamism, Pakistan, Terrorism

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, September 03, 2013