LANDI KOTAL: No new case of polio has been recorded during the last one year in the entire Khyber Agency owing to effective vaccination strategy and constant surveillance by the local political administration and health department.

About 11 polio cases were detected in dif ferent parts of Khyber Agency with the last case of a minor girl diagnosed on November 14, 2015. Recording 76 polio cases out of the total 179 cases in Fata in 2014, Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency was declared as one of the most sensitive area owing to rapid spread of poliovirus and opposition to anti-polio vaccination by some local elements.

Reacting to the alarming situation, health authorities in collaboration with local administration put together their ef forts to implement Continuous Community Protected Vaccination (CCPV), which had shown encouraging results in Karachi and some other sensitive areas of the country.

`Under the CCPV plan, we employed local health workers on permanent basis to reach out to every house and every child under the age of five years,` Agency Surgeon Dr Niaz Afridi told Dawn.

He said that health teams continuously missed around 7,000 children as male healthworkers in most parts of the agency were not allowed to enter the houses during the vaccination campaign owing to social taboos and lack of awareness about the hazards of poliovirus.

`To reach out to all the missed children, we engaged around 100 female workers af ter conducting a micro-census of the missed children in the areas where male workers were not allowed to enter houses for vaccinating children,` said Dr Afridi.

He said that failure in timely payment to health workers, particularly female workers, was a serious issue as several previous campaigns were disturbed because health workers refused to perform duty owing to non-payment of wages.

`We pay on the spot to all the lady health workers on daily basis during the vaccination campaign. The political administration has pledged to provide funds for the purpose as part of a joint strategy to eradicate polio from the region,` said the of ficial.

He said that lady health workers had abandoned their polio vaccination related responsibilities since 2007 owing to different reasons.

The health department has now appointed around 750 health workers, including females, in addition to around 80 health supervisors, who are on the payroll of Unicef.

`With increase in the number of health workers, the target of vaccinating 170 children per worker has now dropped down to only 70 which has largely expanded our coverage of the children under the age of five as the previous target was a burden on a single health worker,` said Dr Afridi.

Political Agent Khalid Mehmud is also upbeat about the successes his administration has achieved in controlling the poliovirus dur-ing the last one year.

He told Dawn that the results of the last four vaccination campaigns were 100 per cent and it was unparallel in the entire country. `We have done something which even authorities in settled districts of the country have not yet achieved. We brought down the number of polio cases to zero during the last one year in comparison to 76 cases in 2014, the highest in the country in one specific region,` said Mr Mehmud.

But he was all praise for his predecessors as according to him it would not have been possible to control the menace of polio without the continuous and collective efforts of previous administrations and health of ficials.

The political agent said that he personally discuss all the `natty gritty` of the campaign with all the stakeholders on daily basis during regular meetings and an opportunity was provided to every participant to express and share opinion for improvement of the drive.

`We hold regular discussions during and after the campaign with the sole aim of religiously conducting our campaigns and also trying our best to convert our weaknesses into our strength for future campaigns,` said Mr Mehmud.

But the success has been achieved at a huge price. About 10 Khasadar and Levies personnel, five health workers and at least two civilians lost their lives since 2014 during various anti-polio vaccination campaigns mostly in Jamrud tehsil.

With success in controlling poliovirus and improvement in security situation in Khyber Agency, the region has also been removed from the World Health Organisation`s list of most sensitive areas.