Afghan Taliban agrees to new national polio vaccination drive

UN agencies are gearing up to vaccinate all of Afghanistan’s children under 5 against polio for the first time since 2018, after the Taliban agreed to the campaign.

The World Health Organization confirmed the agreement on Wednesday, but Taliban officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

For the past three years, the Taliban barred UN-organized vaccination teams from doing door-to-door campaigns in parts of Afghanistan under their control, apparently out of suspicion they could be spies for the government or the West. 

Because of the ban and ongoing fighting, some 3.3 million children over the past three years have not been vaccinated.

The Taliban’s reported agreement now, after becoming the rulers of Afghanistan, appeared aimed at showing they are willing to cooperate with international agencies.

The longtime militant insurgent force has been trying to win the world’s recognition of its new government and re-open the door for international aid to rescue the crumbling economy.

But the World Health Organization and the UN children’s agency UNICEF said in a statement on Monday that they welcomed the decision by the Taliban leadership supporting the resumption of house-to-house polio vaccinations across the country.

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New campaign to begin on Nov 8

Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan are the only countries in the world where polio remains endemic. 

The disease can cause partial paralysis in children. Since 2010, the country has been carrying out regular inoculation campaigns in which workers go door to door, giving the vaccine to children. Most of the workers are women, since they can get better access to mothers and children.

But large sections of the country have been out of their reach in recent years. In parts of the south, particularly, the ban by the Taliban was in effect.

In other areas, door-to-door campaigns were impossible because of fighting between the government and the insurgents, or because of fears of kidnappings or roadside bombs. In some places, hard-line clerics spoke out against vaccinations, calling them un-Islamic or a Western plot.

WHO said a new nationwide vaccination campaign will begin on November 8, followed by another synchronized with Pakistan’s polio vaccination campaign in December. 

The estimated target population is Afghanistan’s 10 million children under 5, including the more than 3.3 million who could not be reached since 2018, Dr Hamid Jafari, WHO's director of polio eradication for the eastern Mediterranean region, told The Associated Press. 

“Restarting polio vaccination in all areas of Afghanistan now will prevent a major resurgence of polio outbreaks within the country and ensure there is no international spread,” Jafari said.

“This is an extremely important step in the right direction,” said Dapeng Luo, WHO Representative in Afghanistan. He said it was a good sign that multiple campaigns are planned. "Sustained access to all children is essential to end polio for good.” 

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'Absolute protection'

On March 30, three women were gunned down in two separate attacks as they carried out door-to-door vaccinations in the eastern city of Jalalabad. 

It was the first time vaccination workers have been killed in a decade of door-to-door inoculations against the disease in Afghanistan. 

Jafari said the Taliban's previous ban in its areas was “mainly for security reasons,” not out of opposition to vaccinations themselves.

The Taliban, he said, have committed to “the absolute protection and security of all health workers and all frontline workers” in the campaign.