All polio environmental samples negative in Punjab

LAHORE:Polio workers continued to visit house-to-house as second national immunisation drive of the year entered third day on Tuesday. Till the first day of the campaign, nearly seven million children have been vaccinated all over Punjab. Lahore topped the list of most vaccinated children as over 0.4 million children were vaccinated the first day. The City was followed by Faisalabad and Rawalpindi where more than 0.3 million and 0.2 million children received vaccination during the ongoing national drive against polio.

Along with oral drops, polio teams also administered Vitamin-A capsules to children. Head of the polio programme in Punjab and Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) Coordinator Khizer Afzaal participated in a ceremony on Tuesday to administer polio drops to children.

Talking to parents, he reiterated commitment to eradicate polio from Pakistan, disclosing that except one sample which was pending with the NIH, all environmental samples of Punjab had tested negative in September.

He attributed the negative samples to hard work of polio teams who he said were the backbone of the programme and working hard to reach every child with a singular purpose to eradicate polio from Pakistan. ‘Punjab is free of polio cases for three years since October 2020. This year only six environmental samples have tested positive so far. After successful implementation of polio campaigns, the virus has been driven out of all cities of Punjab in September. Punjab has set up transit sites in 19 districts to ensure that virus does not travel to the province along with migrant families’, Khizer Afzaal reiterated. Nearly 204,000 polio workers and supervisors are participating in the drive to immunise 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 Emergency Operations Center (EOC) has deployed stakeholders from all areas to facilitate implementation of the polio campaign in priority areas. The EOC head reiterated that multiple doses of polio drops offered the best protection against polio virus and every single child needed to be vaccinated in order to achieve population immunity and prevent virus circulation if we were to eradicate polio from infected zones. EOC head appealed to the parents to welcome polio teams whenever they come to knock at their doorsteps.