ACCORDING to Daily Dawn, nearly one million children were missed and about 53,000 families refused vaccination during Pakistan’s latest nationwide polio campaign.

Although officials say more than 44 million children were vaccinated and coverage reached 98 percent, the remaining 2 percent is still a serious concern. Pakistan is one of the last countries where poliovirus still exists, and even a small gap leaves thousands of children at risk. Polio is a dangerous disease that mainly affects children under five and can cause lifelong paralysis or even death. The fact that 670,000 children were recorded as “not available at home” defies operational logic. A child absent from one doorstep is not absent from the city; they are in schools, markets, parks or with relatives. Yet vaccination teams continue to rely on door-to-door visits alone, allowing hundreds of thousands of children to slip through the cracks. Missed children should not be a routine statistic in official briefings; they represent a systemic failure.

The problem is especially acute in Karachi, which accounted for 31,000 refusals, 58 percent of all refusals nationwide. This raises urgent questions about why Pakistan’s largest and most resourced city remains the epicentre of resistance. Whether driven by misinformation, weak microplanning, poor local administration or political indifference, Karachi’s crisis demands targeted........

© Pakistan Observer