Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: http://www.pakistankakhudahafiz.com...y-war-on-polio-an-uphill-battle/#.UNdtk7Zpehc
Canada?s Afghan Legacy: War on Polio an Uphill Battle
Submitted by Aurangzeb on December 23, 2012 ? 7:31 pm
By Paul Watson
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN?Victory over polio felt tauntingly close in Kandahar City.
The disabling, sometimes lethal, disease hadn?t taken a new victim all year in Afghanistan?s second largest city.
To the Afghan doctors and vaccinators fighting the Canadian-funded war on polio, momentum seemed to be shifting their way.
There was talk of winning a historic fight that would benefit the whole world. If only the virus could be destroyed and join small pox to become only the second disease to be wiped from the face of the earth.
But endemic corruption, mismanagement and insecurity are sabotaging Afghanistan?s campaign against polio, a faltering struggle that Canada backed with some $60 million from 2008 to 2011.
Just weeks ago, the virus found a crack in Kandahar City?s defences. It paralyzed the young son of a truck driver, sheltered behind tall mud-brick walls in a Taliban bastion.
On Oct. 28, Habiburahman Akhter Mohammad, a 9-month-old boy in a slum where rivulets of raw sewage run down the middle of dust-blown laneways, became polio?s first new casualty this year in the provincial capital.
Afghanistan has had 34 confirmed polio cases so far in 2012, well above the number just seven years ago, before Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared the disease a top aid priority in 2008...
Canada?s Afghan Legacy: War on Polio an Uphill Battle
Submitted by Aurangzeb on December 23, 2012 ? 7:31 pm
By Paul Watson
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN?Victory over polio felt tauntingly close in Kandahar City.
The disabling, sometimes lethal, disease hadn?t taken a new victim all year in Afghanistan?s second largest city.
To the Afghan doctors and vaccinators fighting the Canadian-funded war on polio, momentum seemed to be shifting their way.
There was talk of winning a historic fight that would benefit the whole world. If only the virus could be destroyed and join small pox to become only the second disease to be wiped from the face of the earth.
But endemic corruption, mismanagement and insecurity are sabotaging Afghanistan?s campaign against polio, a faltering struggle that Canada backed with some $60 million from 2008 to 2011.
Just weeks ago, the virus found a crack in Kandahar City?s defences. It paralyzed the young son of a truck driver, sheltered behind tall mud-brick walls in a Taliban bastion.
On Oct. 28, Habiburahman Akhter Mohammad, a 9-month-old boy in a slum where rivulets of raw sewage run down the middle of dust-blown laneways, became polio?s first new casualty this year in the provincial capital.
Afghanistan has had 34 confirmed polio cases so far in 2012, well above the number just seven years ago, before Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared the disease a top aid priority in 2008...