Babar Atta: “The anti-polio campaign is not suspended”

Geo.tv talks to Babar bin Atta, the prime minister’s focal person on polio, regarding the disinformation surrounding the nationwide anti-polio campaign and the recent killing of health workers in Pakistan. Excerpts:

Q. What is the refusal rate at the moment?

A. Our target is to reach 40 million children. We miss around 400,000 to 500,000 children every campaign round, of which 50 per cent are due to parents’ refusals. These are the same children that are being missed again and again. They are not new refusals.

Q. But there were media reports today that 700,000 were missed or could not be inoculated in Punjab due to their family’s refusal.

That is absolutely incorrect. There is no such figure available. Also, the anti-polio campaign has not been suspended across the country. It completed its round, which began on Monday and ended on Friday, as planned. The next campaign will be launched after Eid holidays.

Q. What can be done at the federal and provincial level to counter the high rate of refusals in Pakistan?

A. The vaccination campaign has always been run by technical people with technical correctness. The time has come that now we need to shift from technical correctness to communication correctness. Now, we need to go into a full fledge polio campaign only when we are pretty sure that the communities will accept the vaccination.

Q. What action, if any, can be taken against parents who refuse to vaccinate their children?

A. Not a single anti-polio initiative has been implemented successfully using force. Take the example of Boko Haram in Nigeria. Until they were taken on board, even the Nigerian government could not succeed against the disease. We will have to use persuasive and at the same time, aggressive communication strategies.

Q. What about the recent fake campaign against polio in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa?

A. That is different from refusal. What happened was that these people were spreading fear across the province using social media and Whatsapp. This cannot be tolerated. We will take action against people who try to threaten the campaign.

Q. What can be done regarding publications and public figures, spreading disinformation about the anti-polio campaign?

A. A month back, I had written to Facebook to stop such public figures. I asked YouTube and Facebook to clearly state if they stand with the anti-polio campaign or not. If they do, they will have to ban such pages and such people from using social media against the campaign. I did get a response. It was the typical freedom of expression response from Facebook.

Q. Under Pakistan’s laws, can action be taken against these groups and individuals?

A. We can and we will take action on our own. I have already spoken to the information ministry and we will come up with something next week.

Q. In April, three health workers were targeted and killed. What more can be done to secure them?

We currently have 255,000 health workers to cover 40 million children in the field. To protect the teams, there are 150,000 security personnel deployed. The security cover, I think, is already adequate.