HEALTH AWARENESS WELFARE (HAW) :Pakistan could delay polio-free goal: Gates
/ /NEW YORK: Billionaire software baron turned philanthropist Bill Gates
warned on Tuesday that violence in Nigeria and Pakistan could set him
back in his goal of eradicating polio by 2018.
In 2013, The
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- a charity that funds medical
research and vaccination drives -- made wiping out the crippling disease
in the next six years its top priority.
But the Microsoft
founder, who has poured a large part of his personal fortune into the
drive and encouraged fellow billionaires to contribute, said in an AFP
interview that major challenges remain.
India, once the country
with the worst problem with polio -- a mainly childhood disease that
causes the wasting of the limbs -- has just celebrated three years polio
free.
But the disease remains endemic in Afghanistan, Nigeria and
Pakistan. There are also reinfections in war-torn Somalia and Syria
that threaten to break out into areas once free of the scourge.
"Nigeria
and Pakistan are going to be tough. The Pakistan violence is evil,"
Gates told AFP in New York on Tuesday, complaining that local conspiracy
theories have undermined innoculation drives.
"The truth is the
vaccine is to help kids. And spreading rumors and attacking the workers
on this -- those people don´t have justice and truth on their side.
"And
so we may miss by a year or two if we can´t help out with that. The
president, the religious leaders a lot of the supporters of that country
are trying to get the truth out.
"Just hours before Gates spoke,
three polio workers were shot dead in the Pakistani city of Karachi,
forcing the suspension vaccination in the whole southern province of
Sindh.
Last week the World Health Organization warned that
Pakistan´s northwestern city of Peshawar was the world´s "largest
reservoir" of the disease.
Opposition from the Pakistani Taliban to immunization and an insurgency in northern Nigeria have also hit hard.
"This
is really going to come down to Nigeria and Pakistan," Gates told AFP.
"Everyday we´re talking about what´s going well, what´s not, how we
track the teams, where new approaches can help out so we´ve intensified
the effort," he added.
Last November the Global Polio Eradication
Initiative said Nigeria had 51 of the 328 cases of the disease worldwide
in 2013, compared to 121 out of 223 in 2012.
But numbers are up in Pakistan. According to the WHO, Pakistan recorded 91 cases of polio last year compared with 58 in 2012.
"Even in Pakistan it´s somewhat of an increase but still small numbers so we´re very close," Gates told AFP.//
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