Three-day anti-polio drive launched in Mansehra

MANSEHRA: The Health Department launched a three-day anti-polio campaign in the Mansehra district on Monday.

Tariq Hussain, the district polio programme coordinator, told reporters that the department was committed to administering anti-polio drops to children in snowbound Kaghan valley to achieve the target as the district has been police-free for last one decade.

Tariq Hussain said that Kaghan was covered with snow, but even then teams were sent to vaccinate children.

Two women polio workers and a policeman escorting the vaccinators were gunned down by a group of terrorists in 2013. He said that refusal cases of vaccines had dropped to almost zero in Mansehra owing to strict action taken by the district administration against parents refusing to vaccinate their children.

He said that during the ongoing three-day drive, more than 297,000 children of five-year age and below would be immunized in the district. “We have constituted as many as 934 polio teams, which would reach each and every child in the district,” said Hussain. He said more than 229 supervisors, along with deputy commissioner and DHO, were also paying surprise visits to check performance of the teams on the job.