AJK Polio Heroe Heroes Weather Fatification Conditions for Children’s Vaccination

Health workers are fighting this week to grant polio vaccinations at Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), as cases have increased at national level last year.

Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only countries where polio is endemic and fighters have been targeted for decades vaccine groups and their security attendants.

A police officer guarding polio vaccists in the northwest was shot by fighters on Monday, on the first day of the weekly annual campaign after a group of ambassador in the Bakarabad area in Khyber, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

At AJK, Manzoor Ahmad health worker reached the snowy mountains, as temperatures dipped in minus six degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) to grant polio vaccinations in the area.

“It’s a mountainous, hard area … We get here for polio vaccination despite the three legs of snow,” said Ahmad, who is head of the polio campaign in Ajk AFP.

Huge danger

Social worker Mehnaz, who goes with a name and helped vaccines since 2018, said the difficult climate raises a huge risk for vaccination groups.

“We do not have a monthly salary … We come here to give children polio rather than glaciers and avalanches,” he said AFP.

“We are in danger of our lives and we leave our children at home.”

The challenge is greater this year for the country with a population of 240 million, having recorded at least 73 cases of polio in 2024 – a sharp increase in just six cases last year.

Health workers aim to vaccinate about 1,700 children within a week in Surgan, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Muzaffarabad, capital of AJK.

“Our goal is to give polio drops in 750,000 children under five.

“There have been no cases of polio in AJK for the last 24 years,” he added.

PM launches the first move of polio vaccination of 2025

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday, January 2, launched a maiden national campaign against polio for 2025, managing polio drops in children under five years of age.

Facing the launch ceremony, Prime Minister Shehbaz confirmed the determination of his government to eliminate the disease caused by the country.

He said that the national polio vaccination movement would target millions of children in the country to save their future and health. The national campaign against politics will last from 3 to 9 February.

The prime minister hoped that the devoted teams would work day and night to eliminate the disease and reach the distant areas and villages, adding that these groups would successfully respond to huge national responsibility using their full actions.

Attacks on vaccines

Polioleyselitis can easily be avoided by the administration of some vaccine drops, but the authorities’ strict efforts to eliminate polio have faced significant challenges, especially in areas where insecurity, misinformation and parental refusals prevent vaccination.

In the most recent years, the attacks focused on vulnerable police escorts that accompany the vaccines as they go from door to door.

The country has witnessed the growing fighter attacks since the Taliban returned to power in neighboring Afghanistan.

More than 1,600 people were killed in attacks in 2024-the most deadly year in almost a decade-according to the Islamabad-based analysis center.

Islamabad accuses young Kabul rulers of failing to organize fighters organizing on Afghan territory, a category of Taliban government systematically refuses.

In November, at least seven people – including five children – were killed in a bombing targeted by the police who gathered to guard the vaccines near a school in the southwestern Balochistan province.