Govt to use truck art for polio awareness

ISLAMABAD: The federal government has developed a novel way for disseminating awareness about polio and this time it would be through trucks plying between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The trucks on their back sheets, instead of displaying useless pictures or substandard poetry, would be conveying the message against polio through pictorial artwork. The message would be written in Pashto and Darri language, which is spoken and understood in the areas where the polio incidents had been reported.

This was disclosed by Minister for National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination Abdul Qadir Patel on Wednesday while talking to a group of journalists at the Parliament House. The minister said that artists in Karachi offered their services for producing such messages and truck drivers/owners also responded generously since it was being done for a noble cause.

He said the truck drivers would be given some remuneration for the service to keep their interest alive in the matter. He said no polio case had been reported from any part of the country in the first six weeks of this year, while 20 cases were reported last year. “All the cases were from the bordering areas with Afghanistan except one that was found in Lahore but it was an environmental test and again had its roots in Afghanistan.”