ISLAMABAD, Dec 6 (AFP) - The head of the United Nations Children's Fund on Monday praised the "exceptional" progress towards eradicating polio in Pakistan, one of only six countries where the disease is still endemic.
A major vaccination programme with healthworkers hiking to remote regions has cut the number of cases in the South Asian nation by 50 percent, UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy said.
"That is exceptional," she told a news conference in Islamabad after meeting with prime minister Shaukat Aziz to discuss the organisation's work in Pakistan.
Cases in Pakistan fell from 88 last year to 40 this year, according to UNICEF.
Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Nigeria, Niger and Pakistan are the only countries in the world where polio remains endemic.
The debilitating disease was eradicated in industrialized countries after massive immunization drives in the 1950s. At its peak it paralysed and killed up to a million people a year worldwide, according to UNICEF figures.
Children in endemic countries are treated through mass campaigns called National Immunization Days when thousands of vaccinators fan out with stocks of the vaccine.
However Bellamy, who was on a three-day visit to Pakistan, said that there was still work to be done here in the other spheres covered by UNICEF, particularly the drive to improve girls' education.
Rejecting suggestions that religious extremism was to blame for their lack of schooling, she said: "The primary reason is failure to invest in education by the government."
The UNICEF chief added that while Pakistan currently had a low prevalence of AIDS, "now is the time to try and confront it."
Officially, only about 2,300 of Pakistan's 150 million people are HIV-positive, but the World Health Organisation estimates the actual figure at closer to 80,000.
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