Why Polio Eradication Program was not Successfully Implemented in Pakistan?

Abstract

Lots of efforts have been made to make Pakistan a Polio free country for the last two decades, but, Pakistan struggle to be polio free country is not prolific. Pakistan health sector developed the vigorous strategies for the eradication of the polio in Pakistan, but value of all the strategies is only well documented pieces of paper in plan development due to ineffective implementation. The purpose of the study is identifying the potential factors that are influencing the successful implementation of polio program in Pakistan. The sample of the study was 250 respondents from potential stakeholders like Officials of EPI, Official of Ministry of IPC, Official of Health vertical program, International stake holders, clergy, Parents of affected children and Health worker. The exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the factors that influence the implementation of the polio eradication program in the Pakistan. The confirmatory Factor analysis was used to confirm these explorative factors and model fitness. The result of the exploratory factor analysis shows that there are 6 potential factors which Eigen value is greater than 1 like content, contextual, operational, Leadership, Structural  &cultural and Social factors. Confirmatory factor analysis result identifies  context  dimension  (0.98), content  dimension  (0.81),  operational  dimension   (0.44) , structural and cultural dimension     (0.67), leadership (0.89)  and social are (0.28)   as  effective  factors on  the  failure  of polio eradication program in the Pakistan. It is concluded that proper implementation of the polio eradication program is possible through considering the effects of these factors more important than formulation of new policies and plan; otherwise these policies are nothing except well documented pieces of paper in health ministry and Pakistan will not free from polio.

Keywords: Failure of Implementation, Polio Eradication Program and Factor analysis