Taleban asked to join UNICEF bid to eradicate polio in Afghanistan

The Afghan government and the United Nations will call on Taleban fighters – and other insurgents – to help hand out polio vaccinations tomorrow in a bid to eradicate the disease.

Health officials insist Afghanistan is “on the brink” of eliminating polio, following decades of successful vaccination campaigns which have confined the virus to just 15 per cent of the country.

“The only way this works is if all elements of Afghan society are involved, and that includes those groups who are opposed to the government,” said Peter Crowley, head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) in Afghanistan, which works alongside the WHO and Afghanistan’s ministry of public health on the eradication campaign. Afghanistan reported just 23 new cases of polio this year; 19 were from Helmand and Kandahar provinces, traditional Taleban heartlands in the south of the country.

“There are 13 high-risk districts which account for 80-90 per cent of the cases,” said Dr Arshad Quddus, head of the WHO’s Polio Eradication Initiative in Afghanistan. In order to reach those areas controlled by insurgents, he said they relied on local elders to recruit volunteers, “irrespective of any tribal, religious or political affiliation”.

“In some of the difficult districts, the elders have been able to convince different groups about the importance of this programme and its neutrality,” he said. “We just vaccinate children and the communities understand this.”

Those recruits will form part of a 55,000-strong team, administering drops to 7.8 million children under five – during a three-day vaccination drive.

President Hamid Karzai has asked Afghanistan’s most senior religious scholars – the Ulemma Council – to endorse the £21 million UN initiative.