Tens of thousands of volunteers fanned out across Afghanistan this week, braving deteriorating security and distrusting parents to administer two chilled drops of the oral polio vaccine each to millions of children.
Keeping the highly infectious polio disease in check in any country is a daunting task. But in a nation where Taliban militants are fast gaining ground against government forces, it's also a dangerous one.
Afghanistan is one of only three nations where the polio virus is still endemic, along with Pakistan and Nigeria. For a nation at war, its anti-polio campaign has had remarkable success, bringing the number of cases down from 63 in 1999 to just 14 in 2013. Only eight new cases have been confirmed so far this year, compared to 108 in Pakistan.
But as fighting between Afghan forces and militants intensifies ahead of the withdrawal of most foreign troops this year, health workers risk losing precious access to the places - and children - they need to keep tabs on.
This week, in some restive areas of the east and southeast, health workers had yet to go door to door to deliver the vaccine, said Dr. Mohammad Wasim Sajad, a training officer in the Ministry of Public Health in Kabul.
"People are not willing to go out," he said, adding that negotiations with local groups to allow vaccinators to do their work safely were under way.
The full article continues at http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/08/21/us-afghanistan-health-polio-idUKKBN0GK2A220140821 on the Reuters website.