Karachi
The state minister for national health services announced on Friday that the resources for anti-polio and routine immunisation campaigns would be used jointly for better results.
“Our polio vaccination coverage is over 90 percent but routine immunisation is suffering badly and has reduced to a mere 29 percent in Sindh and some other parts of the country,” Saira Afzal Tarar told reporters after a meeting with provincial health officials.
“We have decided to join the manpower and material resources of both polio vaccination and routine immunisation drives,” she added.
“Polio cannot be eradicated from the country without strengthening routine immunisation and administering injectable polio vaccine (IPV) to 6.2 million children annually.”
The state minister was flanked by provincial health minister Jam Mehtab Dahar, health secretary Iftikhar Shallwani, special health secretary Dr Khalid Shaikh, Begum Shahnaz Wazir Ali and other federal and provincial government officials.
Tarar said that IPV was very successful in polio eradication but Pakistan needed trained vaccinators to inject the vaccine.
She added that efforts were under way to train vaccinators and include IPV in the routine immunisation programme.
The minister said the law enforcement agencies could provide 1,000 personnel at a time In Karachi for the security of polio vaccinators.
“We have talked to the Sindh government and it has assured us that the arrangements for the provision of security were being made,” she added.
The state minister also supported the proposal of having a third party evaluation of the polio vaccination campaigns for a real picture of the number of children vaccinated or left during the vaccination drives in the country.
She hoped that the next national polio vaccination drive would be monitored by an independent, international agency for the authenticity of data and statistics.
Tarar said the
government had negotiated with the GAVI Alliance and the international vaccine provider had agreed to provide IPV which would be included in the routine immunisation course from July this year.
“The polio vaccine refusal rate stood at 1.7 million earlier but now it has come down to 0.1 million only,” she said.
“Polio vaccinators are going door to door even in North Waziristan to vaccinate children and the overall coverage is above 90 percent and almost 99 percent in many parts of the country.”
Replying to a question about the shortage of the BCG (anti-tuberculosis) vaccine in the country, she said it had become unavailable in the entire world. However, she added, Pakistan had recently acquired three million doses of the vaccine.