PESHAWAR (Web Desk) – Police on Monday made 471 arrests and lodged cases against more than 1,400 people over refusal to get their children vaccinated against the polio virus.
According to reports, the arrests were made under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO).
These arrests were mostly from the suburban areas in Peshawar where people are averse to vaccination.
Officials said those arrested would be freed only after presentation of two guarantors and a written assurance that they would immunize their children.
The local administration ordered the implementation of Section 144 in the wake of the ongoing anti-polio drive in Peshawar, after the government declared a war against polio last year.
Nine new cases have been detected in 2015 so far.
Pakistan ranks third in the world where the polio virus remains endemic mainly due to reluctance from parents, opposition from militants and attacks on teams of vaccinators.
Pakistan wastes $3.7 million worth of donated vaccine
Pakistan has wasted $3.7 million worth of vaccines donated to protect children from deadly diseases because officials failed to store them properly, a senior health official told Reuters on Monday.
The scandal is the latest problem to be exposed in Pakistan’s poorly run public health services.
“We have suspended the officials concerned and are conducting an inquiry,” Saira Afzal Tarar, minister of state for national health services, told Reuters.
The ruined vaccines were pentavalent vaccines, which combine different vaccines in one injection and are supposed to protect children against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and a bacteria that causes meningitis and pneumonia.
It must be stored at cold temperatures to remain effective but Pakistan’s power sector is chronically mismanaged and the country suffers several hours of power cuts a day.
Officials said the vaccines were exposed to fluctuating temperatures, possibly because of faulty generators. “There may have been issue with the generators, but the facts will become clear after the inquiry,” said Dr Saqlain Ahmad Gilani, the national programme manager at the Expanded Programme on Immunisation.
He said 1.3 million doses of vaccine worth $3.7 million had been wasted. They had been donated by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
Unicef says one in 10 Pakistani children does not survive their fifth birthday. The majority of deaths are due to easily treatable diseases.
Last year, an international agency branded the government’s management of a national polio campaign “disastrous”.
Doctors also say patients are regularly exposed to infected blood as authorities fail to monitor blood banks.
