A polio-free Pakistan: turning the dream into reality

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), polio eradication drives in Pakistan can be very challenging endeavours. Approaching marginalised groups in remote areas of the country is a hard enough task, but perhaps the biggest challenge for anti-polio Health Workers is overcoming the cultural and social challenges peculiar to these communities.

Sikandar Khan is an Active Citizen and an Active Citizens training facilitator. Sikandar and his youth group, Movement for Rural Development Organization (MRDO) shared their experience of working for polio awareness and eradication with a rural community with us. Sikandar and his group members are from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), a conservative region of Pakistan. The group selected a village in a remote area of KPK to launch their Social Action Project.

According to Sikandar, communities in this region are particularly tight-knit. Like all tight-knit communities, they are not very open to advances by strangers. Although members of these communities are known for their warmth and hospitability, it does take them a little time to start trusting people who are not community members.

A major hurdle faced by the group was changing opinions and attitudes of the community members formed because of misconceptions about the polio vaccination campaign. One popular myth about the campaign is that the polio vaccine causes infertility and sterility. The group members organised awareness sessions with the village elders and faith leaders to address these misconceptions and highlighted the need for vaccinating young children.

The outcome of these sessions was very favourable for the group’s project. Most of the elders and faith leaders were successfully persuaded to convince the community members to have their children vaccinated.

The group also enlisted the help of Lady Health Workers (LHW) to administer the vaccine to the children – as all male health worker teams are generally mistrusted by conservative communities in Pakistan. Ultimately 39 families out of 54 had their children vaccinated against polio.

MRDO now plans to return to the village to try and convince the remaining 15 families to get their children vaccinated against the disease.

Football for peace

September 21 is marked internationally as ‘The International Day for Peace’. 'It is a day when communities are urged to consider ways in which they can promote and strengthen the ideals of peace within themselves and with other communities.

Swat is a district of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, not too far from the Pakistan-Afghan border. Swat was once renowned, and still is, for its natural beauty; but Swat also has a troubled past.

Extremist elements had been gaining strength in the region ever since the Taliban established their government in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Skirmishes between extremist elements escalated in 2007 to an occupation of the region by militants. It took two years of on-and-off armed conflict between the Pakistani army and militant forces for stability to return to the region.

Like all communities that have experienced an extended period of conflict, the two years of violence have left a lasting impact on the people of Swat; skirmishes and armed operations may be over, but the memories linger on.

To mark The International Day for Peace, a group of Active Citizens from Swat organized a soccer match on September 23 2011 with the collaboration of CYAAD, a partner organization of the British Council. The chairman of the Swat Aman Committee (The Swat Committee for Peace) and other members of the peace committee also participated in the event.

The match was played in the Kabal Ground, in an area that used to be a stronghold of militants during the ‘occupation’ of Swat. In a way this was a statement by the Active Citizens group that the era of violence in Swat is over.

The football match was a welcome change for the people of Swat. More than 1,000 people were in attendance to cheer on the two teams. Besides entertaining the crowd, the match served as a way to highlight the fact that the young people of the region desired peace, and that they want to play their part to avoid and to resolve conflict.