Afghanistan: WHO, UNICEF claim Taliban will allow women to work in polio vaccine campaign

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) informed that the Taliban will permit female employees to work on a house-to-house polio immunisation campaign to commence on November 8 and will provide protection to groups conducting the drive. The WHO and UNICEF had earlier appreciated the Taliban leadership's decision to support the commencement of house-to-house polio immunisation across Afghanistan.  

UNICEF revealed that the vaccination campaign, which begins on November 8, is expected to reach over 10 million Afghan children under the age of five. In a statement, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF said that this vaccination campaign is going to be the first in over three years to approach 3.3 million children in the nation who were previously deprived of vaccines. The programme will also reach parts of Afghanistan that had previously been unreachable. 

'Every child in every household across Afghanistan must be vaccinated'

The WHO believes that Afghanistan is getting an exceptional chance to eliminate polio. This year, only one case of wild poliovirus has been detected. The organisation underlined that resuming polio vaccination is a critical step for preventing a substantial recurrence of polio disease within the nation and further reducing the danger of cross-border and international transmission. In the forthcoming campaign, children aged between 59 months and six years will receive an additional dosage of vitamin A along with doses of the oral polio vaccine. 

As per a press release, UNICEF Representative in Afghanistan, Hervé Ludovic De Lys stated, “To eliminate polio completely, every child in every household across Afghanistan must be vaccinated, and with our partners, this is what we are setting out to do.”

Furthermore, Dapeng Luo, WHO Representative in Afghanistan has also claimed that several doses of oral polio vaccination provided to the children are considered to be the best protection. Lou went on to say that ending polio for good, requires continued access to all children. “This must remain a top priority,” he added. 

The polio vaccine campaign is the outcome of continuous high-level negotiations between the UN and Taliban leaders to address the country's pressing health requirements as well as the Afghanistan crisis. To reduce the possibility of an increase in illnesses and deaths, both parties have agreed that measles and COVID-19 vaccination programs must begin promptly. 

According to WHO, the security and safety of health workers remain a top priority for the polio campaign. Accordingly, both WHO and UNICEF have urged officials and community leaders to accept and preserve the impartiality of all health programs, and to guarantee that children must have unrestricted access to health care. 

The Taliban's earlier approach of opposing door-to-door vaccination programmes has changed dramatically as a result of this decision. Taliban commanders believed that such operations were used to eavesdrop on their operations throughout their years of conflict against the Western-backed regime. Taliban suspected that usage of these vaccines was a foreign conspiracy to sterilise Muslim youngsters. 

(Image: AP)