Saturday, 30 March 2013
Battling militants’ ban on polio vaccines in Pakistan’s North Waziristan
BANNU, 28 March 2013 (IRIN) - Parents and officials are going to great lengths to immunize children after militants imposed a ban on polio vaccinations in Pakistan’s restive North Waziristan Agency. Government officials are withholding money and identity documents from groups affiliated with the ban, and parents are travelling long distances to get their children vaccinated, in some cases smuggling the vaccine back home.
Abdul Hassan* emerged recently from the district hospital in Bannu, just outside North Waziristan, clutching his toddler son and niece. Their 100km bus ride from Miranshah, the administrative centre of North Waziristan, was well worth it, he said, because he was able to get the children vaccinated.
“The children have received polio drops, which they had not received for over a year, and that is a relief,” he told IRIN.
Militants in the area banned all polio vaccinations in June 2012, to protest the killing of civilians by drones.
Around “200,000 children have been missed [by polio immunization drives] as a result of the ban in North and South Waziristan”, said Mazhar Nisar, health education adviser at the Prime Minister’s Polio Monitoring and Coordination Cell in Islamabad.
He said this “of course meant greater chances of the virus spreading and endangering more children.”
Despite eradication efforts, polio remains endemic in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.
Battling the ban
The government is trying a carrot-and-stick approach to get the ban reversed.
“We are making what efforts we can to bring [the ban] to an end, so the anti-polio campaign can resume,” said Fawad Khan, health director at the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) Secretariat in Peshawar.
Nisar told IRIN that the Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Province, officials at the FATA Secretariat and the political agent - a representative of the federal government - in North Waziristan were “all attempting to talk to tribal elders and sort out matters so anti-polio drives could resume.”
In addition to the negotiations, they are also using colonial-era legislation to impose collective punishment on the areas.
In December 2012, using powers available to him under the Frontier Crimes Regulation of 1901, the political agent for North Waziristan put in place measures that included denying tribal people of North Waziristan passports, national identity cards and other official documentation if community leaders don’t overturn the ban.
A small honorarium to tribal elders was also stopped and development work in some areas has been suspended.
The steps were taken after the Wazir and Dawar tribes declined to back the anti-polio programme, Political Agent Siraj Ahmed Khan said.
Militants had also imposed a polio vaccination ban in South Waziristan but Nisar said this had since been “somewhat relaxed.”
"They told me how to give the drops, and I also brought home enough for two neighbours with small children. I was really scared the militants would discover what I was doing."
A doctor, who asked not to be identified, at the hospital in Wana, the administrative centre of South Waziristan, told IRIN, “Generally people are allowed to bring people into the hospital to receive anti-polio drops, but teams are not permitted to move in the field to deliver them.”
So far, the government’s tactics in North Wazirstan have not led to a relaxation of the unofficial community ban.
Parents act to protect their children
“Our children are still not receiving drops. We are scared for them,” Amina Bibi*, from near Miranshah, told IRIN.
Bibi said she had seen “adults who had suffered polio,” and “was scared of what could happen if the children are not protected.”
Other parents with similar concerns are taking matters into their own hands.
Some “take their children to larger towns like Peshawar or Bannu to receive the polio drops”, said journalist Ayesha Hasan. Peshawar is about 285km from Miranshah.
“My infant son is too young to travel, so I went to Bannu and brought back some vaccines. Doctors there put it in a plastic bottle, packed ice around it and I hid it in a tin of dried milk,” Hazir Gul*, 30, told IRIN.
“They told me how to give the drops, and I also brought home enough for two neighbours with small children,” he said. “I was really scared the militants would discover what I was doing.”
Javed Khan, who works at a clinic in Peshawar, the capital of KP province, told IRIN, “At least a dozen or so families have come to me over the past six months or so and taken vaccine home.”
Distrust, misinformation
An administrative official in Miranshah, who asked not to be named, said, “Yes we know parents are bringing in vaccine. They are desperate, and we try to help discreetly.”
These actions take considerable courage as they expose the parents to potential violence from the anti-polio vaccine militants. The militants in North Waziristan have campaigned vigorously against the polio vaccine, and, according to Hasan, “planted in the minds of people the idea that it may be harmful for their children in some way.”
She said that even people who had previously served as polio immunization workers have voiced suspicions that the vaccine could affect reproduction or be harmful in other ways.
A polio vaccination centre in Bannu District, close to the border of North Waziristan, is a popular choice for parents hunting for the vaccine.
But, as Gul said, “It is not easy to move long distances with children, and the militants could find out where we are going.” He added, “So far whatever measures the government is taking seem to have had no impact here.”
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Syria: UN refugee agency urges access for humanitarian aid
26 March 2013 – The United Nations refugee agency today reiterated its appeal to all parties to ensure safe passage for convoys delivering humanitarian aid to civilians inside Syria.
“In the current security environment, several convoys have had to be cancelled or delayed. This is depriving many Syrians of vitally needed help,” the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Adrian Edwards, told journalists in Geneva.
UNHCR has been working to scale up its operations and is working with governmental and non-governmental parties to see that aid gets through, “however, right now assistance is only reaching a fraction of those in need,” Mr. Edwards noted.
The UN estimates that at least 3.6 million people are now internally displaced in Syria as a result of the conflict that began two years ago.
As of 20 March, UNHCR and partners have delivered relief items – including bedding, shelter, household items and clothing – to more than 437,000 Syrians in some of the most affected provinces, including Aleppo, Al-Hassakeh, Raqqah, Damascus, Dara'a, Deir Ezzor, Hama and Idlib.
Mr. Edwards added the UNHCR’s goal is to deliver relief items to at least one million people by June 2013 and “we hope to reach many more people in the months after that.”
The agency has also strengthened existing presences in Aleppo, Al-Hasakeh and Damascus with new facilities in Al Nabak and Homs.
In the northern part of the country, the UN, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) have carried out four convoys this year, Mr. Edwards said. The most recent delivery of food aid went from Damascus to Tal Abiyad in Ar Raqqah province.
“Seven trucks loaded with 130 tons of aid arrived on 18 March. The trucks were organized by SARC,” he said. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) sent four trucks with 5,000 food baskets.
In addition to aid, Mr. Edwards said that UNHCR gave financial support to 6,400 families in Damascus this year. The agency plans to expand its financial assistance programme in Homs in the coming weeks, delayed so far due to insecurity.
Yesterday the UN decided to temporarily reduce the presence of international staff in Damascus due to security conditions. Most of the Damascus-based staff of the Office of the Joint Representative for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, are being temporarily relocated to Beirut, Lebanon, and to the Joint Special Representative’s main office in Cairo. The Office’s national staff have been asked to work from home, until further notice.
There are approximately 100 international and 800 national staff in Damascus working with the offices of the Joint Special Representative, the Resident Coordinator, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and various UN agencies and programmes.
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