Afghanistan has launched its annual polio inoculation campaign, which aims to reach over nine million children under the age of five. The four-day campaign will cover 31 of the country’s 34 provinces. The Taliban administration is leading the campaign, which is supported by international agencies including the World Health Organization and the United Nations’ children’s agency. Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan are the last countries with endemic polio, an incurable and highly infectious disease that can cause crippling paralysis and even death in young children.
Polio has been virtually eliminated globally through a decades-long inoculation drive. However, insecurity, inaccessible terrain, mass displacement, and suspicion of outside interference have hampered mass vaccination in Afghanistan and some areas of Pakistan. Last year, two cases of the wild type of poliovirus were detected in Afghanistan.
Nek Wali Shah Momin, director of Afghanistan’s National Emergency Operation Center (EOC) for Polio Eradication, said many more areas could now be reached since the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021 and the fighting stopped. Momin said female vaccinators were working on the campaign, despite the Taliban banning many female NGO workers and stopping women from attending universities and most high schools in recent months. Women are crucial to accessing children who are often at home with their female caregivers who are usually not comfortable interacting with male vaccinators.
In areas where vaccination teams had to travel longer distances, authorities required female staff to have a male chaperone. They recruited and trained male family members of the female vaccinators to join the teams’ vaccination efforts. Some armed factions have targeted vaccination efforts in the past. In 2022, eight workers were killed in attacks in northern Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s acting health minister Qalandar Ebad said, “The support of all Afghans, including parents, community leaders, ethnic elders and religious leaders, is critical to eradicate polio and we want them to take part in the fight.” Vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan often encounter difficulties due to conspiracy theories that polio vaccination causes infertility or that the vaccinators are being used as spies.
Before seizing power over the entire country in 2021, the Taliban had banned door-to-door vaccinations in the areas they controlled. However, the UN successfully negotiated with the Taliban to resume the programme. Some health experts said the role of the Taliban could help encourage the acceptance of vaccination in conservative areas around the region. “Religious leaders’ role in the polio elimination drive in both Pakistan and Afghanistan is crucial … the active participation of the Taliban in polio campaigns is a very positive and major development,” said Rana Jawad Asghar, an epidemiology expert and CEO of Pakistan-based consultancy Global Health Strategists and Implementers.