Seven private schools in Pakistan’s northwesternKhyber-Pakhtunkhwa province have been sealed for inciting mass hysteria againstthe polio drive and discouraging parents from cooperating with vaccinationteams.
Pakistan is one of the three countries, along withAfghanistan and Nigeria, where polio is still endemic.
Attempts to eradicate the crippling disease have beenseriously hampered by deadly targeting of vaccination teams in recent years bymilitants, who oppose the drives, claiming the polio drops cause infertility.
The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial government found themanagement of these schools guilty of spreading hate against polio vaccination,Babar Bin Atta, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Focal Person on Polio EradicationProgramme, said in a tweet on Wednesday.
The schools were responsible for “inciting innocentparents to violence resulting in attacks on polio teams and masshysteria,” he said.
On April 22, protesters burnt down a health facility inPeshawar following reports that multiple children have allegedly fallen sickafter consuming anti-polio vaccine.
The violence led to the suspension of the anti-polio drive,involving 260,000 polio workers, and post-campaign evaluation of the Pakistangovernment.
The campaign aimed at administering polio drops to 39million children under five years of age.
Officials believe the situation in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa isturning out to be alarming since 10 of the total 15 polio cases have beenreported from the province this year, the Express Tribune reported.
Atta had in a letter to provincial authorities earlier thismonth, said the current situation needed to be dealt efficiently andaggressively through collective efforts by all stakeholders.
However, the main responsibility fell on the shoulders ofrespective district management, he maintained.
Attacks on immunisation teams have claimed 68 lives sinceDecember 2012. Earlier this month, member of a polio monitoring team was gunned down on Monday by a manafter a verbal brawl during a campaign at a village near Pak-Afghan border.
In January 2014, three workers were killed while in late2012, five workers including four female workers were killed in Qayyumabadarea.