2nd polio immunisation drive begins tomorrow

LAHORE : Punjab is all set to roll out its second national polio immunisation campaign of the year from Monday (tomorrow) all over the province, head of the polio programme in Punjab and Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) Coordinator Khizer Afzaal said in a statement on Saturday.

He said that the campaign will continue for seven days in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad while in other districts the campaign will last for five days. “It is alert to keeping the province polio-free. Therefore, it is taking concrete steps to ensure that quality of the NIDs is of highest standards. It is ensuring that high-risk mobile population children are vaccinated at transit points”, said the EOC head.

Khizer praised the contribution of polio workers saying the program’s health workers were on the forefront continue to reach children in some of the hardest to reach areas with the singular goal to reach every child.

He reiterated that multiple doses of polio drops offered the best protection against polio virus and every single child needed to be vaccinated in order achieve population immunity and prevent virus circulation if we were to eradicate polio from infected zones.

The EOC head appealed to the parents to welcome polio teams whenever they come to knock at their doorsteps.

Nearly 204,000 polio workers and supervisors will participate in the drive to immunize 21.26 million children under the age of five against polio.

This includes 16,575 area in-charges, 3,985 union council medical officers, over 169,000 mobile polio team members, 4,868 fixed team members and over 2,700 transit team members.

Punjab EOC has deployed stakeholders from all areas to facilitate implementation of the polio campaign in priority areas.

Punjab is free of polio cases for nearly three years since October 2020, which is an achievement of the programme.

However, as evident from the genomic sampling of virus in Lahore and Rawalpindi environmental samples, Punjab is at the risk of virus importation.

2023 is the year that Pakistan aims to interrupt transmission of poliovirus from the country and the polio program is working steadily towards that goal, Khizer Afzaal pledged.