ISLAMABAD: The Emergency Committee of the International Health Regulations (2005), responsible for assessing the global spread of Poliovirus, has raised concerns regarding Pakistan’s efforts to reach a significant number of children through its polio eradication campaign.
In a session convened by the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) on August 16, 2023, the committee highlighted gaps in Pakistan and Afghanistan’s attempts to eliminate polio.
The committee underscored that recent favorable environmental samples from Peshawar and Karachi emphasize the persistent risk of a polio outbreak in Pakistan.
It pointed out that a new case of WPV1 emerged in Pakistan since the last meeting, bringing the total for 2023 to two cases. Both instances occurred in the Bannu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. Throughout the year, at least 15 environmental surveillance-positive samples were identified.
The committee further said that despite the action plan in southern KP resulting in the vaccination of an additional 160,000 children, the context remains challenging. This includes political instability, insecurity in certain areas requiring police patrols to accompany front-line workers, and instances of vaccination boycotts. In these cases, communities demand other services in exchange for permitting polio vaccination.
Pakistan’s caretaker health minister Dr. Nadeem Jan point of view regarding polio Eradication
Meanwhile, responding to the statement of the emergency committee, Pakistan’s caretaker Health Minister Dr Nadeem Jan said that boosting routine immunization and coverage of zero doses through outreach campaigns would aid polio eradication efforts in the country.
“Starting Monday, we are launching a targeted, integrated campaign. We are hopeful that by December 2023, the endogenous circulation of WPV1 will be halted,” he said.
Since the last meeting, Afghanistan has reported five new WPV1 cases from Nangarhar province, as stated by the emergency committee. These cases occurred in five different districts and had onsets from April to May 2023.
“Any setback in Afghanistan poses a risk to the program in Pakistan due to high population movement,” the emergency committee warned.
In 2023, the committee further observed the identification of only two genetic clusters of WPV1, as opposed to three in 2022 and five in 2021.
However, there have been multiple chains of transmission within these two genetic clusters, detected primarily in the endemic zones of Eastern Afghanistan and South KP of Pakistan, including an extreme orphan virus, indicating some gaps in surveillance.
The emergency committee warned that due to the ongoing transmission in eastern Afghanistan cross-border spread into Pakistan and the large pool of unvaccinated zero-dose children in southern Afghanistan, there remains an ongoing risk of WPV1 re-introduced into the southern region.
