Rumours,
conspiracy theories and polio
On April 22,
2019, a countrywide five-day polio vaccination drive was launched. Soon after
it kicked off, children administered the vaccine in one school in Peshawar
complained of nausea and abdominal pain, were rushed to hospital and discharged
after treatment. However, through social media, the fake news was circulated
that some children had lost consciousness after being administered the vaccine.
This set off panic amongst parents, who rushed 40,000 children to hospitals
throughout Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), according to KP Health Minister Dr Hisham
Inamullah Khan. Although the children were found to be well and healthy and
discharged, the rumours had taken their toll. In a province where conspiracy
theories emanating from religious extremists in the past alleged that the polio
vaccine was a device to render children sterile, the pre-vaccination campaign
public education effort appeared to be conspicuous by its absence. The response
of the authorities, who conflated the discovery of the fake social media video
purveyor to some grand conspiracy, was not the wisest under the circumstances.
Instead of addressing meaningfully, credibly and convincingly the panic that
had set in among parents in the province, the authorities went into overdrive
to assert some deep-seated conspiracy against the vaccination campaign, roping
in some unnamed interested ‘political elements’. There appeared to be little if
any appreciation of the concerns of worried parents or any appreciable effort to
calm nerves and restore confidence in the harmlessness and necessity of the
polio vaccine. Social and mainstream media may have had its part to play in
spreading unnecessary rumours and panic, but it is essentially the inadequate
and misplaced response of the authorities that exacerbated the situation. The
fallout of the affair has been a jump in refusals by parents to have the
vaccine administered to their children. Such is the state of worry that private
schools have passed the buck to administering the vaccine in homes rather than
schools, in the presence of parents.
The issue has
first and foremost to be understood in context. The polio vaccine has proved so
effective worldwide that it enjoys a 99.99 percent success rate in eradicating
the crippling disease which, if not tackled in time, can cause paralysis and
even death in children. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the only three
countries in the world where the polio virus has not been completely
eradicated. The current, and now rendered controversial immunisation campaign
was intended to reach 39 million children under five years of age throughout
the country. The services of more than 260,000 health workers were acquired for
this campaign. The breakdown indicates that 20 million children in Punjab are
to be administered the vaccine, nine million in Sindh, over 6.8 million in KP, 2.4
million in Balochistan, 0.4 million in Islamabad and 0.7 million in Azad
Kashmir. Previous campaigns have dented the incidence of polio in Pakistan
considerably, but such is the nature of this disease, complete elimination is
the only guarantee against its re-emergence and spread. The authorities should
have embarked on a public education campaign before launching the vaccination
drive, which may have helped minimise the damage due to perceived reactions to
the vaccine or even fake, motivated news to damage the drive’s credibility and
acceptability. Once the panic set in, however, the focus should have been on soothing
the jangled nerves of panic-stricken parents misled by false and motivated
information rather than berating alleged ‘conspirators’. Certainly, there is a
considerable pool of religious extremist elements who have led the campaign
against anti-polio vaccination since long. Precisely for this reason the
authorities’ pre-drive education campaign should have been pursued strongly.
Now the thousands of refusals by parents to have their children immunised in
the wake of this debacle has left a big question mark over Pakistan’s standing
in the eradication of polio stakes.
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