Vardhan offers help to Pak polio programme
25 Oct 2014 5:31 AM IST
While hailing Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s recent declaration of adoption of a ‘National Emergency Action Plan-2014’, the union health minister made this announcement on the occasion of World Polio Day. The programme will be fully state funded till 2018.
‘I have been through the plan and find that the script is perfect. Pakistan has resolved to set up monitoring cells at the grassroots level. They are also talking of involving social groups, a strategy which worked wonderfully in India,’ the minister said.
India’s social mobilisation network for the fight against polio, which was originally conceived in Delhi in 1994 when Harsh Vardhan was health minister of the state, has been lauded by all international organisations, including World Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF, Rotary International and United States Centre for Disease Control.
Harsh Vardhan noted, ‘This particular model would stand Pakistan in good stead in her own anti-polio drive. Unless all stakeholders in society, most importantly in Pakistan’s context her religious clergy, are involved, it would be impossible to achieve total polio eradication.’ The series of attacks on polio vaccination volunteers in Pakistan has severely hit the implementation of the programme in the country. Several volunteers have been killed in attacks on them for trying to administer vaccines.
Apart from this, health centres were also targeted by extremists groups of Pakistan.
‘I have been through the plan and find that the script is perfect. Pakistan has resolved to set up monitoring cells at the grassroots level. They are also talking of involving social groups, a strategy which worked wonderfully in India,’ the minister said.
India’s social mobilisation network for the fight against polio, which was originally conceived in Delhi in 1994 when Harsh Vardhan was health minister of the state, has been lauded by all international organisations, including World Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF, Rotary International and United States Centre for Disease Control.
Harsh Vardhan noted, ‘This particular model would stand Pakistan in good stead in her own anti-polio drive. Unless all stakeholders in society, most importantly in Pakistan’s context her religious clergy, are involved, it would be impossible to achieve total polio eradication.’ The series of attacks on polio vaccination volunteers in Pakistan has severely hit the implementation of the programme in the country. Several volunteers have been killed in attacks on them for trying to administer vaccines.
Apart from this, health centres were also targeted by extremists groups of Pakistan.
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