Pakistan’s polio drive ‘a disaster’

[Al Bhatti]

October 28, 2014

Pakistan’s polio drive ‘a disaster’

Taliban militants have long been the scourge of Pakistan’s polio vaccination campaign, attacking aid workers and the police who protect them as they distribute doses to children.

But experts say there is another reason for the sharp spike in cases of the crippling disease in Pakistan this year – government mismanagement.

“Pakistan’s polio programme is a disaster. It continues to flounder hopelessly, as its virus flourishes,” the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB), which advises agencies fighting polio, will say in a report to be released this week.

The prime minister’s polio cell was disbanded during 2013 elections, the new government delayed reconstituting it, and in recent months the prime minister has been consumed with protests in the capital that have only just ended.

“Eradicating polio is not rocket science,” said Elias Durry, head of the World Health Organisation polio campaign in Pakistan.

“If we could have three to five months to have really good campaigns, then we could get rid of this disease,” he said.

“We have been doing half-baked campaigns in high risk areas.”

Polio was meant be a thing of the past. A global campaign came tantalisingly close to wiping out the disease altogether.

Now polio, which can kill or paralyse a child in hours, is endemic only in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

So far this year, Pakistan has had 217 polio cases, a 14-year high accounting for 85 per cent of instances around the world.

The disease spreads easily from person to person, and Pakistan has already exported the virus to Syria, China, Israel and Egypt. Experts say complacency is not an option and the government has called the situation an “emergency”.

Yet as the latest vaccination campaign started this week in Karachi, vaccination workers said they had not received stipends from the provincial government for months.

Some have dropped out of the campaign in Karachi, a teeming city of 18 million people where the disease is entrenched.

As teams prepared to venture out on vaccination missions into some of Karachi’s most dangerous streets, police deployed to protect them showed up late.

Vaccinators must wait, which means they miss children. Sometimes only a third of children in an area are vaccinated, the WHO said, and low coverage fuels new outbreaks.

Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif took six months to appoint an official responsible for polio, and the government approved a funding plan only last month.

“We had a loss of about nine to 10 months, which is a very big setback,” Mr Ali said.

Ayesha Farooq, the prime minister’s appointee on polio, admitted there were problems.

Most new cases were in areas where security was poor so children had not been vaccinated, she said, and denied that Mr Sharif was not taking the issue seriously.

Emergency operations centres, meant to be operational by July, will not be ready until the end of November, she said. The IMB report said the delay “speaks volumes about the inertia of the programme in Pakistan”.

For frontline polio workers, late pay is less worrying than lack of protection. Sixty-four people have been killed in attacks on polio teams and their security escorts since 2012, when the Taliban banned vaccinations.

Their targets are women like 19-year-old medical student Asma Nizam, who received a death threat for taking part in the programme.

“A man came on a motorbike and said, ‘if you want to save your life, you should go from here’,” she said.

The next day, militants killed five of her colleagues.

Last Monday, police sent to protect Ms Nizam were three hours late.

Pakistan’s police are thinly spread, especially in crime-ridden Karachi where only 26,000 police watch over the city. Some are seconded as bodyguards for politicians.

“I have seen six police taking a VIP’s teenager to the salon but they cannot spare any officers to protect the poor children of Pakistan,” one health official burst out in exasperation.

Karachi police spokesman Atiq Shaikh said the force was severely understaffed.

A further hurdle is caution among families offered the treatment. Some believe Taliban propaganda that says vaccinations are a Western plot to sterilise children.

Aiding polio’s spread has been this year’s military offensive in the tribal region of North Waziristan, which drove nearly a million people out of the conflict zone.

The mass movement allowed workers to vaccinate children previously unreachable. But families also moved to areas where vaccination coverage was patchy, allowing polio to reestablish itself in cities where it had been eradicated, experts say.

Children may need the oral vaccine up to 10 times for it to be effective. Many Pakistani children are malnourished or have diarrhoea so the vaccine is not absorbed.

The unlucky ones may end up like two-year-old Rafia. Her legs were partially paralysed after contracting polio this summer.

“She was vaccinated whenever they came,” said her father Ghulam Isaq. He massaged her tiny toes as a group of polio vaccinators looked on.

“We need help even if we are poor,” Mr Isaq said. “We are Pakistanis too.”

Pakistan’s polio drive ‘a disaster’ | The National

-------------------------------------------

What good is Pakistan for?



We cannot eradicate poverty.

We cannot solve electricity issue

We cannot provide clean to everyone

We cannot eradicate polio unless we get aid and help from outside

We cannot provide safety and security to the common man.

Due to a presidential flight, movement of the entire airport operation is taken hostage, showing how much secure Pakistan is or how much secure the politicians feel in Pakistan as they know they themselves created this mess.

Qualified people are leaving Pakistan daily.

What good are our politicians and governments?

But we will make sure we will let the politicians and their family members live in Pakistan peacefully and make sure that the security and safety that is to be provided to 180+ million is completely focused and placed at the disposal of the politicians and their family members and make sure make sure they will get chance in turns to govern Pakistan all their lives.

To hell with Pakistan and long live our politicians and lawmakers.

 

[Dubious]

government mismanagement.

Yea try getting the govt to admit that they are still trying to blame KPK for FATA stuff

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

Makes me wonder , when India, 1.3 billion people can be vaccinated, Pakistan can achieve a lot in this.
Tribal areas I can understand, but the difficulty in a metropolis like in Karachi is even more surprising

 

[TruthSeeker]

Polio incidence hits 15-year high in Pakistan
By MUNIR AHMED, Associated Press

Updated 9:13 am, Wednesday, November 5, 2014

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The incidence of polio in Pakistan hit a 15-year high on Wednesday, as the prime minister vowed to rid the country of the crippling disease in the next six months despite a Taliban campaign to kill workers distributing vaccines for it.

Dr. Elias Durry, who heads the World Health Organization's polio eradication efforts in Pakistan, told The Associated Press that authorities have already registered 235 polio cases since January. WHO data showed that the last time numbers were higher than that was in 1999, when 558 cases were documented.

Pakistan is among the world's only three countries where polio, which can cause paralysis and death, remains endemic. Militants regularly target vaccination teams in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and elsewhere in the country, accusing polio vaccine workers of acting as spies for Washington and saying the vaccines make boys sterile.

The disease, which mainly affects children, struck thousands of Pakistanis in the 1980s, but after a long-running vaccination drive it fell to its lowest point yet — 28 cases — in 2005, the figures show. After that, Taliban threats and attacks set infection rates on the rise.


"We refuse to see our children getting disabled for life," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement during a high-level meeting on the subject in the capital, Islamabad. "We will make Pakistan a polio-free country in the next six months," he added.

Local militants in the country's North Waziristan tribal region banned polio prevention teams from the area in 2012, stopping vaccinations and driving the resurgence of the disease, which hits the area disproportionately. Across the country, militants have killed about 60 workers and police escorting polio teams since then.

A major government offensive that began last summer has driven many most militants from the area, however, and displaced some 800,000 people who now can be vaccinated in more accessible areas, said Aziz Memon, a senior official at service organization Rotary International.

"I think Pakistan can eradicate polio through properly conducted anti-polio campaigns. Now it is quite easy to vaccinate those children who missed the campaign since 2012 because of militant threats to the polio workers in North Waziristan and elsewhere in northwest Pakistan," Memon told the AP.

He said Rotary would also play an active role to ensure the eradication of polio in Pakistan.

Polio incidence hits 15-year high in Pakistan - SFGate

 

[Al Bhatti]

A Governments which is pro-active delivers at at-least 80+ plus efficiency, meanwhile Pakistani governments deliver at less than 50% efficiency and that also decades after the need arises, not decades or years before the need arises.

To hell with democracy lovers and to hell with the politicians who think that democracy is the ONLY correct way to rule a nation and to develop a nation, Because if they continue to run this so called democracy they and their family members will get more that what they want or deserve on account of the nation and the common man on the street.

To hell with those who fall in this trap no matter who he is even if he is my grandfather or my parents or brothers or sisters or family members. To hell with these people who place the politicians above all other rights that is the duty and obligation of the government to deliver.

Government is to serve the common man on the street they should be like a servant to them not the other way around.

I don’t mind to see a monarchy in Pakistan for the sake of the nation and development of the nation and for the rights of the common man on the street if it delivers at 80% efficiency.

I don’t mind to see a dictatorship in Pakistan for the sake of the nation and development of the nation and for the rights of the common man on the street if it delivers at 80% efficiency.

I don’t mind to see one party rule in Pakistan for the sake of the nation and development of the nation and for the rights of the common man on the street if it delivers at 80% efficiency.

I don’t mind to see a bipartisanship in Pakistan for the sake of the nation and development of the nation and for the rights of the common man on the street if it delivers at 80% efficiency.

I don’t mind to see constitutional monarchy in Pakistan for the sake of the nation and development of the nation and for the rights of the common man on the street if it delivers at 80% efficiency.

I don’t mind to see a democratic system in Pakistan for the sake of the nation and development of the nation and for the rights of the common man on the street if it delivers at 80% efficiency.


Important is how efficiently the government delivers to it’s people not the fXXcking form of government to falsely show that we are a modern democratic country.

-------------------------------------

November 13, 2014

Why polio-free UAE has launched immunisation campaign
MoH working with airport authorities 'to fight entry of virus' into country

The UAE has rolled out a new National Polio Immunisation Campaign, targeting nearly 416,000 children below the age of five years with an additional dose of vaccine.

The first dose of the campaign will run from November 16 to 27, followed by a second from January 11 until 22, which is being organised by the UAE’s Ministry of Health (MoH), in conjunction with the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) and the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi (HAAD).

The Ministry maintains that authorities were impelled to launch the campaign for an additional booster as immunisation support campaigns remain the fastest way to increase protection in children.

Even though the UAE has been declared polio free since 1992 by the World Health Organisation (WHO), this additional supplementary dosage has also been tagged as an added safety measure following new cases of polio reported in 2013 and 2014 in ‘some neighbouring countries’, according to the MoH flyer.

The WHO reports only three countries, namely Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, remain polio-endemic in 2014.

This year till date, 236 cases of polio have been reported in Pakistan alone, prompting the government to make it mandatory for residents flying to the UAE and other countries to be vaccinated and carry certificates of the same from June 1 of this year.

All the passengers – including pregnant women – need to get vaccination dose at federal and provincial hospitals and airports before departure.

Dr. Hussein Al Rand, Assistant Undersecretary for Clinics and Health Centres, MoH stated that the purpose of the UAE national immunisation campaign was also a measure to fight the entry of the virus to the UAE.

When quizzed whether the UAE was working in conjunction with airport authorities simultaneously to offer health checks here, Dr. Rand said: “We have provided medical centres at local airports across the UAE to provide assistance to cases of children aged between one and five years that are travelling into the country.”

Dr. Farida Al Hosani, Director of Communicable Diseases, Public Health and Research Dept, HAAD, added: “The airport facilities are open for the sick and children entering the country, while medical centres and hospitals across the UAE are also open to residents who have family members visiting and have children in need of this vaccine below the age of five years and do not have insurance for the same. This is a free service we provide.”

Of the 416,000 children targeted in the drive, approximately 87,000 are in Dubai alone.

Children will receive two drops orally (twice) at fixed sites, clinics and centres across the UAE, in addition to participating schools. It will also include field sites for inaccessible categories.

Last year, the UAE pledged Dh440 million to support global efforts to eradicate polio by 2018. The vaccination campaign aims to reach millions of children in Pakistan, and was launched by the UAE-Pakistan Assistance Program.

During the UAE’s four-month effort to combat the disease, children were vaccinated in 25 areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and other tribal regions.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, Etihad Airways also began screening a short inflight video prior to arrival on all flights to Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar and Karachi.

The inflight programme, ‘Leap of Faith’, aims to raise awareness of this crippling and potentially fatal disease to the many thousands of Pakistani workers returning home or visiting their families, the airline said.

Fast facts on polio campaign

Polio is an infectious disease that affects young children and can cause life-long paralysis or death, according to MoH.

The disease is not curable.

The only form of protection is the required dose of the polio vaccine as part of the country’s national programme.

In its official circular, the Ministry further states: ‘In 2013 and 2014, some neighbouring countries that were polio free have reported new cases of polio. To ensure the disease is not imported into the country and to strengthen children’s immunity against polio, it is important to conduct the campaign and vaccinate children who are at risk’.

The Ministry further states that even if a child has already taken the vaccine earlier, the campaign is providing supplementary doses for ‘extra protection to your child and community’.

The Ministry further adds: ‘It is safe to administer multiple does of the vaccine to children. The vaccine is made to be given several times to ensure full protection’.

Why polio-free UAE has launched immunisation campaign - Emirates 24/7

 

[Al Bhatti]

Looking at what is happening in Pakistan and the situation of Pakistan after 67 years and imagining where we could have been as a nation with all the potential, human resources and natural resources we have and we had;

Any Pakistani government (in any form) which fails to deliver at at-least 80% + efficiency I consider it a failed government, a government of looters, a government of thieves, a government of scoundrels, no matter who is in that government even if the most religious and pious man in Pakistan is part of that government.

 

[Al Bhatti]

November 12, 2014

A doctor administers a polio vaccine to a Yemeni boy during an immunisation campaign in Sanaa. The UAE is watching regional trends in a disease it has eliminated.

Under-five boosters keep UAE polio-free

A national polio immunisation campaign was launched this month to provide boosters for children under five.

The Minister of Health, Abdul Rahman Al Owais, said that the UAE was polio-free and no cases had been registered since 1992, but that it was important to continue to implement the national immunisation campaign in all emirates.

This particular initiative provides an additional booster that will increase immunity in children, which is supplementary to the national immunisation campaign.

It targets newborns to five-year-olds. Children will receive two oral inoculation drops twice. The first dose of the vaccine will be administered from Sunday until November 27 and the second dose between January 11 and 22.

“The ministry prepared a clear strategy in November and December to target 416 children depending on the participation and coordination between all the partners of the campaign – distribution of work, transparency and participation and efforts to achieve successful results of the campaign.

“Our working plan includes supervision and follow-up from all the committees and includes regular visits to ensure the adequate implementation of the campaign”, Mr Al Owais said.

He said that the Ministry of Health was very keen to cooperate with the federal ministries and government authorities to provide comprehensive immunisation coverage for every child in the UAE.

“We have not seen any cases of polio in the UAE since 1992,” said Dr Farida Al Hosani, acting head of public health at Health Authority Abu Dhabi. “However, some cases of the disease have been found in a few countries in the region in the last couple of years. The World Health Organisation has emphasised greatly on immunisation, and thus we are having a mass immunisation programme for the first time in 10 years. People from all over the world are coming to the UAE, and we want to ensure that the immunity in the children is 100 per cent. We are polio-free but we want to make sure that the children are protected.”

Dr Al Hosani said that the number of children targeted by the campaign was based on population data.

“Two doses of the drops are recommended and the first dose will be given in November and the second in January. Nationals, residents and visitors are all being targeted,” she said. The vaccine is free for all.

Dr Hussein Al Rand, assistant undersecretary for clinics and health centres and chair of the organising committee, said that the purpose of the national immunisation campaign was to promote immunisation against polio, enhance immunisation to prevent the spread of disease among children, fight the entry of the virus into the UAE and achieve immunisation coverage for more than 90 per cent of the targeted population.

“The campaign targets 416 children in the UAE and there are 116 members in the immunisation teams,” said Dr Al Rand.

“All team members will work morning and evening shifts on the condition that they are organised by the Ministry of Health in cooperation with Abu Dhabi and Dubai Health Authorities.

“All our efforts will maintain the declaration that the UAE is polio free”, Dr Al Rand said.

Under-five boosters keep UAE polio-free | The National

 

[Al Bhatti]

November 11, 2014

A still from the film shows a Pakistani child receiving drops. Pakistan is one of only three in which Polio remains endemic. The infection mainly affects children younger than 5, and one in 200 cases causes permanent paralysis.

The documentary poster.

Gulnaz Shesazi works with a team that earns one or two dollars a day vaccinating the children. It can be deadly work, even for those associated with the vaccinators.

Struggles of polio vaccination teams captured in Image Nation’s ‘Every Last Child’

Image Nation’s Every Last Child records the resistance that awaits Pakistan’s polio-vaccination teams, who carry on their work despite attacks by Islamists, and the real danger that every unvaccinated child represents.

“Human life is a gust of air that passes. I may be a cripple in this life, but I’ll be fit in the afterlife.”

These are the words of Habib Rehman, 31, a Pakistani beggar who lost the use of his legs to polio and now spends his days on the dirty streets of Karachi.

His desperate story will be told at a film festival in New York this month, with the premiere of the Image Nation documentary Every Last Child.

Mr Rehman’s story is one of five in the film, highlighting the efforts of vaccination teams and the daily battles and dangers they face.

In the past two years in Pakistan more than 60 people have been killed in attacks by the Taliban on vaccinators and their security teams.

The country is one of three where polio remains endemic. The infection mainly affects children younger than 5, and one in 200 cases causes permanent paralysis.

Cases have decreased by more than 99 per cent in the past 25 years. There were 416 cases of polio reported around the world last year.

But the World Health Organisation maintains that even if one child carries the virus, the whole world remains at risk. And the last strongholds – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria – could result in “as many as 200,000 new cases every year, within 10 years, all over the world”.

“Firstly I thought, ‘Polio? What’s the big deal? It has almost gone’,” says director and filmmaker Tom Roberts. “But when I got into it and studied it, it became utterly fascinating.”

Roberts, originally from the US but a British resident for more than 40 years, spent five months living in Pakistan, following those trying to eradicate the virus.

“Polio has been forgotten by the western public because it has been successful at getting rid of it. In a sense, it is a good thing it has been forgotten,” he says.

“Some people say, ‘Why bother? What is the big deal when you have people dying of measles or malaria?’.

“At the end of the day, when we kick this disease we can then say measles is our next target.”

The five central characters in the film are Mr Rehman, an expert who has successfully eradicated the virus elsewhere, a vaccinator, a cynic and a sick child.

Gulnaz Shesazi, the team leader of a vaccination programme, was one of Roberts’s heroes.

Ms Shesazi works with a team that earns US$1 (Dh3.67) or $2 a day vaccinating the children. It can be deadly work, even for those associated with the vaccinators.

“The Taliban came up and shot her niece and sister-in-law,” Roberts says. “She has suffered hugely from that.

“Her response was not to say, ‘I’m going to walk away from this’. It was to recruit other members of her family and recommit herself to the polio campaign.

“She spoke out publicly and her family were threatened. But she was determined to do this right.”

The film shows bloodied streets where attacks were carried out. In one scene Ms Shesazi points out bullet holes around the front door at the spot where her niece was shot dead.

In March, a Taliban bomb killed at least 12 in a targeted attack against a vaccination team in north-west Pakistan.

The Islamist group claims that the attacks were spurred by its suspicions that the vaccination programmes are part of a western plan to sterilise Muslims.

Others accuse the teams of spying for western governments.

Dr Elias Durry, another of the film’s characters, says it is hard to counter the Taliban’s claims in the community.

“The Taliban or anybody else propagating these wrong perceptions, they have a better narrative than us,” Dr Durry says. “They say we are spies, they say the vaccine is non-Islamic.

“We don’t have a counter-narrative that is being used as strongly as theirs. We stick with facts – the vaccine is safe.

“In Peshawar we took away some of the misconceptions. When they say vaccinators are spies we say no, these vaccinators are your vaccinators, they are coming from your community.”

Resistance remains strong in some areas and parents still refuse to have their children vaccinated.

Men from the tribal regions, who have travelled to Karachi for work, bring with them tribal roots and beliefs, and the misconceptions they have been fed by the Taliban.

But resistance to vaccination programmes is not a new thing, Roberts says.

“Every single vaccination programme in the world has found a level of resistance. It is not a Jewish thing, it is not a Christian thing, it is not a Muslim thing.

“There is a cultural resistance to federal agents and interference.”

Dr Durry agrees, saying the polio crisis has more to do with the misconceptions and mistrust than it does with the efficacy of the vaccine or sanitation levels.

“If you look at all the countries that have struggled to finish the job, whether it is Pakistan or India or Egypt, they have one common denominator – the fact that we have to go back and immunise children multiple times, and most of this activity is done by governments,” he says.

“Countries with a population that has some kind of suspicion or mistrust of the central government is where we are struggling. What it always lacks is the willingness of the population to accept that the programme is run by the government.”

Dr Durry has fought successfully for police escorts, who are also being killed, and for whole communities to be cordoned off during mass vaccinations.

He has also studied the amount of time needed between the initial vaccine and boosters to minimise the exposure risk to his teams and security.

“A year and a half ago everyone was laughing at me when I said we needed to reduce the campaign from three days to one day to reduce the threat to the vaccinators out in the field,” Dr Durry says.

The frustrating fact in Pakistan is that the vaccination programme is so close and yet so far from eradicating the virus.

While a great many of the country’s children have been successfully immunised there are still a large number unvaccinated, allowing the virus to survive.

“Wherever you have large numbers of densely populated areas and that population has some mistrust in the government, they will start to not accept this immunity drive willingly and then you will keep missing a large number of children,” Dr Durry says.

“By nature these are places where sanitation is bad. It all comes together and makes the job of reaching every child, every time, very difficult. And of course sanitation and lack of other health services play with it too.”

In the film Roberts meets men from tribes who do not believe in the vaccine. One told the crew it “makes girls prematurely adult and boys impotent”.

Roberts says it was important for him to not mock the men but simply record their views.

“These are Muslims and this is Pakistan,” he says. “That is one of the reasons why in the film some of the guys had really radical theories.

“I left out the mentions of the Bermuda triangle, aliens and the CIA mixed together. They were treated with respect. I didn’t laugh at them.

“They think there was something wrong with the vaccination campaign. One man said, ‘I love my children. I would never do anything to harm them, and the polio vaccine will harm them’. He will never let them have it. Hopefully his children will never have to pay for that mistake.”

But unfortunately, children do.

The final character in the documentary is Zabih Ullah, the father of an 18-month-old baby boy who is taken to a clinic where Roberts is filming.

“He is told that his son has polio,” the filmmaker says. “We were filming when that happened, the shock and pain on his face ... he has tears running down his face and asks, ‘what can I do? I would give my arm, my leg, my life for him’.”

The crew follows the story of the father and his toddler as the clinic tries to teach him to walk.

For Dr Durry, this year and next are critical if polio is to be eradicated from Pakistan and the world.

“The international community may not have a lot of problems and in Pakistan the narrative might change a bit as time goes by, especially next year, because it looks like because of all of these problems the country will stand very, very obviously as the only country in the world that is harbouring the virus,” he says.

“We are seeking from the society and from the government and from the country itself to do whatever it needs to change that direction – engineering the fact that some of the problems are very complex and difficult.

“Despite that, we are pushing and we want to see things happening in a way that the situation is changed.”

Every Last Child will premiere at the DOC NYC film festival on November 14.

Struggles of polio vaccination teams captured in Image Nation’s ‘Every Last Child’ | The National

 

[Cherokee]

As teams prepared to venture out on vaccination missions into some of Karachi’s most dangerous streets, police deployed to protect them showed up late.

I thought anti Vaccination menace was limited only to tribal areas ? or has that sentiment reached the largest city in Pakistan ?

 

[Bouncer]

A Governments which is pro-active delivers at at-least 80+ plus efficiency, meanwhile Pakistani governments deliver at less than 50% efficiency and that also decades after the need arises, not decades or years before the need arises.

I am not sure how you are arriving at these efficiency figures, any source or explanation please?
While GOP is at fault in a lot of cases, this polio issue is not entirely gov's fault. People need to realize that vaccination is not bad for them or their children. In other countries too (US for example), there are people who do not want their kids to be vaccinated. They have their own reasons. In Pakistan I believe vaccination has a bad reputation because of

1. uneducated mullahs preaching against it
2. nasty Americans using it for their intelligence activities

So instead of blaming GOP, how about we talk about the people too?

 

[Al Bhatti]

I am not sure how you are arriving at these efficiency figures, any source or explanation please?
While GOP is at fault in a lot of cases, this polio issue is not entirely gov's fault. People need to realize that vaccination is not bad for them or their children. In other countries too (US for example), there are people who do not want their kids to be vaccinated. They have their own reasons. In Pakistan I believe vaccination has a bad reputation because of

1. uneducated mullahs preaching against it
2. nasty Americans using it for their intelligence activities

So instead of blaming GOP, how about we talk about the people too?

Yes it is the fault of the people because of the mullahs.

Who is supporting those mullahs? There is no government control on who can be a mullah and who cannot, no government control on poison spewed in the Friday sermons, so isn't it the government’s fault to begin with?

They let the hell loose for all these years and now the results are showing not just in Polio eradication but in all pillars that form and support a nation, be it economic pillar, social pillar, security pillar, and most importantly the education pillar (for children and adults) which forms the foundation of all the other pillars on which a nation stands.

Leave aside party affiliations, I as a Pakistani am not happy to see what Pakistan has reached to today after 67 years. And the future 50 years don't give any hope if all this continues by our politicians (all politicians without any exceptions).

Remember, a nation’s destiny can be changed in 20-30 years if the government wants to do so (no matter which form of government), you can calculate how many times we have missed the chance to change the destiny of the nation, and how many times more we will be missing the boat.

 

[Bouncer]

Yes it is the fault of the people because of the mullahs.
Who is supporting those mullahs? There is no government control on who can be a mullah and who cannot, no government control on poison spewed in the Friday sermons, so isn't it the government’s fault to begin with?
They let the hell loose for all these years and now the results are showing not just in Polio eradication but in all pillars that form and support a nation, be it economic pillar, social pillar, security pillar, and most importantly the education pillar (for children and adults) which forms the foundation of all the other pillars on which a nation stands.
Leave aside party affiliations, I as a Pakistani am not happy to see what Pakistan has reached to today after 67 years. And the future 50 years don't give any hope if all this continues by our politicians (all politicians without any exceptions).
Remember, a nation’s destiny can be changed in 20-30 years if the government wants to do so (no matter which form of government), you can calculate how many times we have missed the chance to change the destiny of the nation, and how many times more we will be missing the boat.

Bhatti sab, I agree with you that our politicians are filthy to the core. Each one of them. I am not a very religious person, but there is a hadith that says something like people get the leaders they deserve (not exact words).

However, in this particular case, it is my personal opinion, that GOP is doing something. I can't say they are doing enough. My point was that health workers go to people's houses and they get shot! The policemen guarding them get shot. Now you will say that people shoot health workers because they don't trust vaccines, and they don't trust vaccines because mullah party preaches against it, and GOP doesn't stop mullah party because of so and so reasons. Lets just hope people and gov get rid of this menace soon.

 

[Cheetah786]

Bhatti sab, I agree with you that our politicians are filthy to the core. Each one of them. I am not a very religious person, but there is a hadith that says something like people get the leaders they deserve (not exact words).

However, in this particular case, it is my personal opinion, that GOP is doing something. I can't say they are doing enough. My point was that health workers go to people's houses and they get shot! The policemen guarding them get shot. Now you will say that people shoot health workers because they don't trust vaccines, and they don't trust vaccines because mullah party preaches against it, and GOP doesn't stop mullah party because of so and so reasons. Lets just hope people and gov get rid of this menace soon.

L O L Hadiths is from Hazrat Joseph de Maistre (nation gets the government it deserves)

Bhatti sahib consider this.

Leaders and activists of banned militant groups and persons appearing on the Schedule 4 list of the Anti-Terrorist Act in the city face being detained by the police in the next 24 hours, sources told Dawn.

So, they know who they are and where they are, but will not capture and punish them. Just detain them for few days and let them out in general public again to cause terror.

Pakistan is infected with terrorist, yet the only country in Asia that I know of which is not carrying out death penalty.

You want the Monster protecting terrorist for personal gains. To fix the country and its economy think again. Status Quo suits them just fine.