ISLAMABAD: Health sector stakeholders have attributed the hiring of 10,000 community volunteers in `challenging areas as the factor that changed the likelihood of eradicating the polio virus in Pakistan.

The polio vaccination programme has been hampered by a lack of accessibility for workers in various areas, in addition to the refusalofguardians tovaccinate their children, believing the vaccine to be haram and a conspiracy to reduce the Muslim population. Areas such as these are considered `challenging` areas.

Alongside representatives of United Nations agencies, they were informed during a meeting on Thursday that 306 polio cases were reported in 2014, which fell to 54 in 2015. This year, 12 cases have been reported so far, compared to 28 at the same point last year.

In December 2014, the polio vaccination programme decided to hire community volunteers in Karachi after a large number of refusal cases. The idea behind the move was that local individuals would be made responsible to vaccinate children because it would be possible for them to visit homes and convince residents to vaccinate theirchildren.National Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC) Coordinator Dr Rana Mohammad Safdar said after the success of the move in Karachi, it was decided this would be replicated in all the `challenged` areas.

During 2015, 10,000 community volunteers were hired in parts of Fata, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Sindh.

`Because of the concept of communitybased vaccination, the rate of vaccination increased from 90pc to 95pc. We hired people from the community on monthly remuneration, and made each of them responsible for 300 houses in the area where they lived,` he explained.

`These community volunteers not only made lists of all the children of 300 houses, they also started convincing people that they should vaccinate their children...

During every campaign, they marl( the children on the list after vaccination, due to which we get confirmed reports of missed children and refusals.

`Because of the availability of lists of children along with their names and fathers` names, it became possible to involve influential personalities of the area to vaccinate those children. Not only did the vaccination rate reach 95pc, but the number of reported polio cases also fell,` he said.

In response to a question, Dr Safdar said the launch of the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) also helped reduce the number ofcasesso far, the vaccine has been administered to 3 million children.

IPV, a costly method of vaccination, contains the dead polio virus and is administered through an injection. Once the IPV has been administered, a child has almost no chance of getting polio. In Pakistan, the oral polio vaccine (OPV) is more common, and contains live, weak polio virus.

`Another initiative was that we held medical camps in the areas where refusals were reported from, and vaccination 600,000 children while providing other medical treatment,` he said.

The meeting, which was chaired by National Health Services (NHS) Minister Saira Afzal Tarar, was informed that 280 million children were vaccination in nine campaigns conducted during the low transmission season between September 2015 and May 2016.

There are still challenging areas in Karachi, northern Sindh and southern KP, and an alert was raised regarding campaign quality problems in Afghan areas bordering Fata, KP and Quetta. However, participants were told that the polio virus would be interrupted completely by the end of 2016.

However, Ms Tarar did express concern regarding the sub-optimal quality of the campaign conducted during the previous low transmission seasons in Islamabad and northern Sindh.