Looks like the days of aggressive reporting on polio cases in Pakistan are over. Two new polio cases in the country have been reported in a manner not seen before.
Today, Express Tribune, a paper that reported aggressively on each new polio case and particularly cases where unvaccinated children contracted poliovirus, barely touched on the two new cases – one from Peshawar and one from the nearby tribal area of Khyber Agency. No details on the names, ages, specific locations, and above all, the vaccination status of the affected patients.
Is it a coincidence that just when the politically controlled narrative of “success against polio via vaccination” is being propagated by the national news sources, reporting on new polio cases has been slashed to bare minimum?
While no major papers printed or posted on the web any stories about the two new cases, Pakistan Today posted only 3 sentences – yes, precisely 3 sentences – about the Khyber Agency case, informing that it was an 18-month-old baby girl that got polio. No name or vaccination history was mentioned, nothing that could be verified independently.
Similar style of obscure reporting was seen on The News Tribe where the second case from Peshawar was attempted to report – attempted because they didn’t actually report anything – just that a case was reported from FR area of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Given these observations, the concern cannot be ignored that new polio cases, particularly those in already vaccinated children, would be intentionally kept from making news. It’s because of the “service” of media that vaccination became a “science” and being “unvaccinated” was demonized to the degree of criminal activity – all to maximize the profits of the pharmaceutical rings that make and distribute vaccines.
