Our experience in Cuba and our suggestions to help eradication of Polio from Pakistan.
(By: Dr Mazar)
Our working
experience in Cuba as Health workers (Doctors)
Cuban Health System can be summarized and its success can be
outlined with its following characteristics. Its
- · Very interactive
- · Easily approachable medical consultations & advices
- · 100% coverage
- · More than 80 National Health programs to cover different Transmissible & non- transmissible diseases
- · Basic Pillars: Prevention, Promotion & Rehabilitation; with Prevention thoroughly divided to emphasize each and every aspect of bio-psycho-social patterns of human life.
- · Infrastructure of Health System and its wide network
- · Medical curriculum and its practice involving the medical students and the community members in the improvement of Health Indicators.
- · Free medicine
Polio & Pakistan
In Pakistan, persistent wild poliovirus transmission is
restricted to three groups of districts:
- · Karachi City
- · Quetta Block – Quetta, Pishin and Killah Abdullah districts
- · FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – three adjoining areas (called ‘agencies’) in FATA bordering Afghanistan, and Peshawar District
In total, only
11 of Pakistan’s 152 districts, agencies and towns have persistent poliovirus
transmission. Within these districts and agencies, the virus
circulates primarily in a number of sub-district administrative units known as
‘union-councils’ (in the districts) or ‘tehsils’ (in the agencies).
In
addition, Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan repeatedly reinfect one another, due to the substantial population
movements within and between the countries.
Moreover, the misunderstandings about the lawfulness of vaccination in
Islam, in these less literate areas is another obstacle.
Our suggestion
towards the eradication of Polio:
To empower the vaccination programs and to obligate the
families to vaccine their children, we suggest:
- · Mutual cooperation between different NGO’s and Government departments.
- · Creating trimester targets or goals and so comes the regular trimester revision of the strategies
- · Involving medical students, doctors, religious leaders, actors, and community leader (Sardars, Waderas, Malik, Khan)
- · Issuance of driving licenses, NIC Cards, Registration of Cars, weapons, Admission in the schools, only when the vaccination is done.
- · Active promotion and education about Polio
- · Providing security to the vaccinating teams
- · Establishing vaccine centers in the religious schools (Madrasas, Universities, Schools)
- · Applying vaccines especially on the border entries and exits to Afghanistan.
