RIYADH — A senior American health official on Tuesday commended Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah's initiative to help Pakistan fight polio. Dr. Nils Daulaire, assistant secretary for global affairs at the US Department of Health and Human Services, told Minister of Health Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah on the sidelines of a World Health Organization meeting in Muscat that as a scientist he appreciated the Kingdom's recognition of the importance of fighting the disease through vaccinations. He claimed some in Pakistan opposed the idea of giving vaccinations. He said: "We all acknowledge that Muslim physicians and scholars contributed greatly to the march of medicine until it finally landed in the West and that vaccination was one of the methods used in prevention of diseases until it was adapted as a scientific method for fighting disease in modern medical circles.” Al-Rabeeah discussed with Daulaire the possibilities of cooperation between the Kingdom and US in the fields of fighting MERS-coronavirus, supporting the Kingdom's field epidemiology program with US experts for consultation and training, developing the Saudi health system and conducting joint medical research. At the 60th session of the World Health Organization's Eastern Mediterranean Regional Committee meeting in the Omani capital on Sunday, Al-Rabeeah announced that Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah had ordered support for Pakistan in its campaign against polio by providing medical supplies through the Ministry of Health in cooperation with the WHO. He also announced that the King also sent imams from the Grand Mosque to raise awareness from a religious perspective on fighting the disease. "This humanitarian gesture from the King is an embodiment of his care about the affairs of Muslim brethren, wherever they are," said the minister, who is heading the Saudi delegation to the meeting. He also said the Kingdom has played an effective role in the WHO, especially with regard to the Riyadh Declaration on non-communicable diseases, combating MERS-coronavirus, as well as mass-gathering medicine. The Saudi move to send imams to raise awareness among the population is seen as an attempt to combat Taliban claims that fighting the disease through vaccinations is a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. The Taliban in Pakistan imposed their own ban on inoculation in June 2012, especially in areas controlled by them. According to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), polio is a highly infectious disease that invades the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis in a matter of hours. It is a crippling and potentially fatal infectious disease. There is no cure, but there are safe and effective vaccines. The strategy to eradicate polio is therefore based on preventing infection by immunizing every child until transmission stops and the world is polio-free. In April a $5.5 billion global polio eradication plan was launched with the aim of vaccinating 250 million children multiple times each year to stop the virus finding new footholds, and stepping up surveillance in more than 70 countries. So far the virus was cornered to just a handful of areas in three countries, namely Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where polio is endemic. Global cases have dropped by more than 99.9 percent in less than three decades, from 350,000 in 1985 to just 223 last year.
