Mens forældre rejser langvejs for at skaffe polio-vaccine til deres børn i hemmelighed, håndhæver militante forbuddet i dele af Pakistan – officielt i protest mod angreb fra amerikanske førerløse fly – droner – på udvalgte islamist-ledere.
BANNU, 28 March 2013 (IRIN): Parents and officials are going to great lengths to immunize children after militants imposed a ban on polio vaccinations in Pakistan’s restive North Waziristan Agency.
Government officials are withholding money and identity documents from groups affiliated with the ban, and parents are travelling long distances to get their children vaccinated, in some cases smuggling the vaccine back home.
Abdul Hassan (not his real name) emerged recently from the district hospital in Bannu, just outside North Waziristan, clutching his toddler (lille stump af en) son and niece.
Their 100 km bus ride from Miranshah, the administrative centre of North Waziristan, was well worth it, he said, because he was able to get the children vaccinated.
“The children have received polio drops, which they had not received for over a year, and that is a relief,” he told IRIN.
Militants in the area banned all polio vaccinations in June 2012, to protest the killing of civilians by drones.
Around “200.000 children have been missed by polio immunization drives as a result of the ban in North and South Waziristan”, said Mazhar Nisar, health education adviser at the Prime Minister’s Polio Monitoring and Coordination Cell in Islamabad.
He said this “of course meant greater chances of the virus spreading and endangering more children.”
Despite eradication efforts, polio remains endemic (dybt rodfæstet) in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.
Battling the ban
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http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97743/Battling-militants-ban-on-polio-vaccines-in-Pakistan-s-North-Waziristan
