Race to beat polio in Afghan camps

It is hard to establish how many have been vaccinated

		By Daniel Lak BBC News Online's correspondent on the Pakistan-Afghan border

Health worker Fatima Bibi moves from door to door in the Shamshatoo refugee camp.

She is carrying a cooler full of ice that keeps layers of polio vaccine and vitamin A drops fresh.

Health worker Fatima Bibi is on a one-woman mission to beat polio

With a pair of scissors, she pounds on the scrap wood doors of the camps' mud huts. Inside, children are not always happy to see her.

With their mothers, she prises open reluctant mouths and drips vaccine and vitamins inside.

Howls of protest often ensue as the youngest children fight back.

But no matter, she is undeterred in her mission to help organisations such as the World Health Organisation in their mission to eradicate polio by 2005.

"If they don't have this vaccine, they'll fall ill and we won't end this horrible disease. So they can cry all they want," she says.

Waiting inside one mud-walled compound is 45-year-old Boba, and her grandson, Pervaiz.

Those in refugee camps can at least receive the vaccine

They and other family members escaped a front-line village near Kabul a year ago.

Today, American bombs are pounding down around the small hamlet that they once called home, as US air force planes try to soften up nearby Taleban troops so the Northern Alliance can recapture territory it has not held since 1996.

"Our children in Afghanistan, they suffer because we have no money. There's no food or water. Now they can't be vaccinated against disease and surely more of them will die. We're lucky to be here," says Boba, waving her hands in emphasis.

Eradication programme

In charge of the inoculation programme is Dr Sayed Marouf Hoffiani, a paediatrician from Kabul.

He walks the dusty lanes of the camp, reminding people to be at home for the vaccinations.

Viruses know no borders. If we don't eliminate this disease in Afghanistan, it'll plague us in Pakistan, and vice versa

Dr Sayed Marouf Hoffiani

And he makes sure that health workers put a mark on the doors of the homes where the children are now protected from the dread of polio.

"Viruses know no borders," he says, "We have to keep inoculating and not worry about wars or safety or whether someone is an illegal refugee. If we don't eliminate this disease in Afghanistan, it'll plague us in Pakistan, and vice versa."

Keeping track

The problem is not so much that the bombing has disrupted inoculations across the border in Afghanistan.

With hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of Afghans fleeing their homes, it is difficult to know just how many have actually been visited by the health workers.

And huge numbers gathered along the frontier are probably avoiding all contact with officials until they make a dash for safety in Pakistan.

Another difficulty comes from more than 60,000 illegal refugees who have somehow got into Pakistan, perhaps along mountain trails or by bribing border guards.

At least two-thirds of them probably have not been vaccinated, despite a policy of "don't ask, don't tell" adopted by government health officials.

Winter deadline

At refugee reception camps in border areas, children are simply inoculated with no personal information sought. Dr Javed Pervaiz is the author of the policy.

If we don't reach these people, we're wasting time. With winter coming, we have to reach everybody and nothing matters more than that

Dr Javed Pervaiz

"If we don't reach these people," he says, "we're wasting time. Every child must be immunised against polio, everyone needs the protection from measles that vitamin A gives them. With winter coming, we have to reach everybody and nothing matters more than that."

Unicef, the organisation funding the campaign, says it has been a considerable success so far, despite the war, despite the flow of internally displaced people, and despite the "invisible" refugees of Pakistan.

More than 5m Afghan children were targeted and 30m in Pakistan.

Officials will know in three to four weeks whether they have succeeded or not.

But it is clear that their efforts have been heroic and whatever the result, they have made great strides in wiping out a disease that has plagued human kind for thousands of years.