New outbreak of polio in Pakistan

(Vatican Radio) Health officials in Pakistan have recently confirmed five new polio cases, and suspect there are many more.

It is one of a series of outbreaks this year in the North Waziristan tribal region, where militant threats and attacks on vaccination teams have stymied efforts to vaccinate the population.

Pakistan is one of only three countries left where polio is endemic, and the World Health Organization (WHO) is supporting local efforts to finally put an end to the disease.

“Pakistan has been making incredible progress against polio - really had brought the number of cases, more than halved the number of cases in 2012 - partly due to intense government support, and partly due to intense popular support,” said Sona Bari, of the WHO’s Polio Eradication Initiative.

She told Vatican Radio that in the tribal, semi-autonomous region of North Waziristan, militants have stopped vaccination efforts.

“It is all a complex mix of sort of political use of religion and suspicion of the government. In that context,” Bari said.

“What happens is that polio finds children who are unvaccinated, so when there is a ban on vaccinations parents and communities are essentially stuck: They don’t have access to the vaccine,” she continued. “So we have now a building group of what we call susceptible children in northwest Pakistan, and this the engine of the outbreak.”

She said unless these children get vaccinated, polio outbreaks are “going to spill over to other parts of Pakistan.”

Listen to the full interview by Charles Collins with Sona Bari: