Insight and opinion from The National’s editorial leadership
October 03, 2023
If Pakistan’s polio vaccinators got together and formed their own city, it would be among the country’s 25 most populous. Armed with clipboards, ice packs and vials of vaccine, this 390,000-strong force of women and men routinely canvasses the country in an effort to reach uninoculated children at risk of contracting polio, an incurable disease eradicated from most of the planet but still endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The latest vaccination drive began on Monday. The challenge is immense – 43 million children in Pakistan are thought to remain unvaccinated.
And there has been a renewed sense of urgency this year. In January, Pakistani health authorities detected wild polio virus with genetic links to the variant circulating in Afghanistan. The same month, when the government launched a campaign, 62,000 parents – most of them in Sindh province – refused to vaccinate their children.
One of the greatest obstacles is a pervasive climate of scepticism and hesitancy around vaccines in Pakistan’s conservative tribal, rural and religious communities. At the root of the problem is a lack of health education and awareness. But misconceptions around religious beliefs – Islam is not opposed to vaccination – abound, and in the most isolated communities a general suspicion towards any perceived interference by the state into family life.
There have also been rare instances where vaccinations were used as an excuse to collect intelligence, which only contributed to the scepticism. In 2011, the CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town of Abbottabad, where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding, in its attempt to obtain DNA from the Al Qaeda leader's family.
43 million children in Pakistan are thought to remain unvaccinated
Vaccine hesitancy is not rare, though the successes of recent inoculation drives – polio being among the most notable – has gone a long way to gaining public acceptance. The progress is perhaps unsurprising; the World Health Organisation and global charities have invested huge effort and resources into immunisation drives in poorer countries in recent decades. Donors have given millions of dollars to the cause, and the experience of Covid-19 has reignited public conversations in rich-world capitals about the importance of global vaccination. The UAE, in particular, has been a big supporter of polio vaccination in Pakistan, donating funds and helping train administrators for years. The UAE donated $23 million to the effort in 2021 alone and does so on a regular basis.
Today, polling shows growing acceptance in the developing world that vaccination is good for children’s health. In many poorer countries, access to vaccines is a far greater challenge than vaccine hesitancy.
But health officials know that scepticism of vaccines remains a fundamental challenge, and even if a minority of people refuse to take vaccines, in many countries that can mean millions of people susceptible to contagious viruses. To eradicate polio, for instance, a country needs to immunise more than 95 per cent of its population. But in Sindh, the refusal rate may be as high as 15 per cent.
Pakistani authorities have been mulling more creative ways to address this. Sindh’s provincial assembly is currently debating legislation that could see parents fined and even face a month in prison for refusing to vaccinate their children against a number of diseases, including polio, measles and pneumonia. It would be a controversial move, but the debate alone has provoked much-needed conversations about children’s health in rural communities.
It is important to remember that during the Covid-19 pandemic, much was made about the unequal distribution of vaccines between rich and poor countries, in addition to episodes of vaccine hesitancy in countries throughout the world. The pandemic petered out before the problem was ever really addressed in a comprehensive, permanent way. Even though the pandemic has receded from most people’s minds, that does not mean the mission of protecting humanity from viruses is gone, and Pakistan’s polio fight is a good reminder that the biggest battlefront still lies in the developing world.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were experimenting with sticky tape and graphite, the material used as lead in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But when they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
Brolliology: A History of the Umbrella in Life and Literature
By Marion Rankine
Melville House
Essentials
The flights Etihad and Emirates fly direct from the UAE to Delhi from about Dh950 return including taxes. The hotels
Double rooms at Tijara Fort-Palace cost from 6,670 rupees (Dh377), including breakfast.
Doubles at Fort Bishangarh cost from 29,030 rupees (Dh1,641), including breakfast. Doubles at Narendra Bhawan cost from 15,360 rupees (Dh869). Doubles at Chanoud Garh cost from 19,840 rupees (Dh1,122), full board. Doubles at Fort Begu cost from 10,000 rupees (Dh565), including breakfast. The tours
Amar Grover travelled with Wild Frontiers. A tailor-made, nine-day itinerary via New Delhi, with one night in Tijara and two nights in each of the remaining properties, including car/driver, costs from £1,445 (Dh6,968) per person.
Islamophobia definition
A widely accepted definition was made by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in 2019: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” It further defines it as “inciting hatred or violence against Muslims”.
'Skin'
Dir: Guy Nattiv
Starring: Jamie Bell, Danielle McDonald, Bill Camp, Vera Farmiga
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
UK-EU trade at a glance
EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years
Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products
Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries
