PESH AWAR: The government is facing the daunting task of vaccinating the inaccessible children and those who don`t get vaccination owing to their parents` refusal in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Area during Sehat Ka Ittehad (SKI) programme.

The SKI (Alliance for Health), inaugurated by Pakistan Tehreek-iInsaf chairman Imran Khan on Friday, is aimed at vaccinating those children, who had previously been inaccessible for the health workers.

The campaign is being launched in response to global criticism of Pakistan, especially Fata and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which recorded most of polio cases last year.

Fata recorded 179 and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 68 polio cases. Bothare responsible for 85 per cent pollo cases, recorded in the country during 2014.

Pakistan has reported 306 or 70 per cent of the globally recorded 357 polio cases and is under tremendous international pressure to eradicate the poliovirus because most countries where the diseases has long been eradicated,feelthat this region puts their children at risk of polio.

Poliomyelitis is presently the only childhood disease which can be completely eradicated through mass vaccination therefore the SKI holds hope.

However, the campaign will be judged from how it covers children whose parents have earlier refused to administer oral polio vaccine to them. Currently, about 30,000 children remain unvaccinated in Khyber Pakhtunl(hwa.

The administrative support to cover refusal cases has long been felt by the vaccinators, who work in the field.

Similarly, about 75,000 children in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 70,000 in Fata didn`t receive OPV as the health workers couldn`t reach them owing to security reasons. During SKI, army is a partner of the federal and provincial gov-ernments to reduce number of missed children.

The presence of unvaccinated children has been a stumbling block to the vaccination campaign in the region and SKI`s performance will only be judged from its efforts to reduce parents` refusal and ensure vaccinators` access to the children.

The results of the SKI will emerge after two months as new cases wouldn`t surface now because of the low-transmission season. The region is home to virus where six million children below the age of five risk polio for want of vaccination.

The campaign also targets Nowshera, Peshawar, Tank and Lakki Marwat, which recorded one polio case each in 2015. It also covers Khyber and South Waziristan Agencies, which reported one case each. Security situation has already shown improvement as Hujra-based vaccination has already been started in North Waziristan Agency but there is a need of door-to-door campaign to ensure that all the children get immunised during all rounds of the programme.

Hujra-based vaccination is not advisable because the campaignneeds to be carried out by the administration concerned to identify the parents, who have been challenging government`s writ, and vaccinate all the children.

Similarly, door-to-door campaign has been conducted in Jamrud, Khyber Agency but the immunisation should be frequent in areas where children have not been covered during the past immunisation drives.

The vaccinators, who felt scared to be part of the campaign because of the killing of the health workers by Taliban, want full protection to be able to reach the children. Also, those tasked with mobilisation for vaccination and convincing refusing families to accept immunisation of their children, require safety.

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The programme has yielded positive results and has been applauded worldwide but it couldn`t be continued till a desired time and the province came to the spotlight internationally only because of polio.

Political support by PTI and PML-N is crucial for the campaign`s success.