KARACHI, PAKISTAN—Three new cases of polio were reported in Pakistan last week,
bringing the total number of worldwide polio cases this year to five — all of
them in Pakistan.The country remains front and center in the global fight to
eradicate the highly infectious disease from the planet.The new cases were reported in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan
province, as well as in Hangu and Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.The first polio case of the year, reported in Pakistan’s largest
city, Karachi, was a 3-year-old boy who had received at least seven doses of
polio vaccine.
“Unfortunately the child was suffering from malnutrition, and the immunity level had not built up,” said Aziz Memon, the chair of Rotary Polio Plus in Pakistan.This points to the larger problems of a weak health system, along with issues of security and internal migration due to conflict in various parts of the country or the ongoing military operation in areas bordering Afghanistan.Either polio cases or the presence of the polio virus in the environment, determined through methods like water sample tests, have been reported in all four provinces of Pakistan.
Last year, 54 of the 73
cases of polio worldwide were in Pakistan. Without eradication, health
officials fear a resurgence of the disease. Memon thinks the country will have to
redouble its efforts in the wake of the new cases.“We have to be very vigilant in the coming
five months so that we can stop the transmission,” he said.The presence of polio in Pakistan is not due
to a lack of effort against it. Pakistan has been trying hard, with the help of
the international community, to immunize all its children. Polio vaccination
campaigns are regularly carried out in various parts of the country. 
More than 100,000 workers participated in an anti-polio drive last month alone.
Workers went door to door, to try to get to every child, especially those who
might not have seen a doctor for their regular immunization. These efforts, however, are often hampered by
security concerns.Islamist militants consider polio workers
Western spies, and immunization, a Western conspiracy to sterilize Muslim
children. The CIA’s use of a vaccination campaign to try to collect DNA samples
from a compound in Abbottabad to ascertain Osama Bin Laden’s presence made
polio campaigns even more suspect. Attacks on polio workers increased. They
have since gone down but security remains a big issue.
A
suicide blast outside a polio eradication center in Quetta in January killed at
least 15 people. In February, gunmen shot and wounded a polio worker in Lahore.The
government has countered by providing extra security and recruiting Muslim
clerics to speak up in favor of polio vaccinations. These clerics sometimes go
with the polio workers to persuade hesitant parents to allow their kids to get
polio drops. Some of them have used their weekly Friday sermons to advertise
support for polio vaccination.Pakistan’s
tribal areas bordering Afghanistan have long been a place where Taliban
militants strongly opposed polio vaccination campaigns. A military operation
has weakened the Taliban’s hold on the territory, but major parts of it remain
high risk areas for polio, according to End Polio Pakistan.
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