Japan provides soft loan of $59m for polio vaccine procurement

Islamabad

The government of Japan Thursday announced to
extend a soft loan of $59 million to Pakistan for the eradication of polio. The loan will be utilized to procure 273 million doses of oral polio vaccines.

Notes to this effect were signed and exchanged between Japanese ambassador Takashi Kurai, and additional secretary for Economic Affairs Division Anjum Assad Amin.

The government of Japan has focused on polio eradication, which is indeed a global challenge for public health. Since 1996, for over 20 years, Japan has supported the polio eradication campaign in Pakistan by way of procurement of polio vaccine, strengthening of logistics for delivery through cold chain system, improvement in the treatment of vaccinators, dispatching Japanese medical experts, and so on. Thereby Japan’s assistance including this loan reaches approximately $212.5 million in total.

At the signing ceremony, Takashi Kurai stated, “Our assistance this year of about Rs6.2 billion is the biggest among all assistance we have ever provided so far in this area and we sincerely hope that this loan will be a finishing blow to polio infection and lead to complete polio eradication where we can see all the children free from it.”