Arise:
Health workers are challenging freezing temperatures this week to administer vaccines against polyomyelitis in Azad Jammu and Kashmir after cases increased throughout the country last year.
Pakistan and neighbor Afghanistan are the only countries in which polyomyelitis is endemic, and militants have attacked vaccination equipment and their safety escorts for decades.
A police officer protecting polyomyelitis vaccinators in the Northwest was shot dead on Monday, the first day of the annual campaign that will last a week.
In Kashmira, the health worker Manzoor Ahmad walked through the snowy mountains as temperatures dropped to less six degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) to administer vaccines against polyomyelitis in the region.
“It is a mountainous and hard area … We arrive here for vaccination against polyomyelitis despite the three feet of snowfall,” said Ahmad, who directs the polio campaign in the Kashmir managed by Pakistan.
The social worker Mehnaz, who takes a name and has been helping vaccinators since 2018, said that the difficult weather has a great risk for vaccination equipment.
“We do not have a monthly salary … We come here to give photos of polyomyelitis to children despite glaciers and avalanches,” he told AFP.
“We cease our lives and leave our children at home.”
The challenge is higher this year for the country with a population of 240 million, after registering at least 73 cases of polio in 2024, a strong increase of only six cases the previous year.
Health workers are aimed at vaccinating approximately 1,700 children within a week in the city of arise, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Muzaffrabad, the capital of Kashmiro administered by Pakistan. “Our goal is to give vaccines against polyomyelitis to 750,000 children under five years of age,” said Ahmad.
