TAG meets this week to assess polio eradication efforts

Islamabad

The Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on polio eradication will meet in Islamabad this week to assess programme progress and discuss remaining obstacles and opportunities as Pakistan edges closer to achieving the goal to stop transmission of the virus in 2016.

Senior leaders from across the Global Polio Eradication Initiative will join federal and provincial team leads as they brief TAG members on the progress since the last meeting in January 2016 and assess plans for the 2016/17 National Emergency Action Plan leading into the next low transmission season.

The Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) remains optimistic that the strategies driving the programme, particularly in the core reservoirs of the virus in Karachi, Khyber-Peshawar and Quetta Block and high-risk areas of north Sindh and southern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, are behind the reduction of cases, reduction of persistently missed children, and decline in positive environmental samples.

During the January meeting, TAG concluded that the goal of interruption of transmission is achievable, but was at risk unless there is further reduction in immunity gaps, especially in the core reservoirs. A number of critical recommendations were given including strengthening the focus on core reservoirs, identifying specific action plans for poorly performing districts, using lessons learned from community-based vaccination to improve performance in mobile team areas and more focused and sustained involvement of leadership, particularly from deputy commissioners.

TAG recommended that further improvements to community surveillance and environmental surveillance would be ever important for the detection of transmission in the coming months.

Taking up the recommendations in the six months since TAG reviewed the programme, PEI claims that the ‘one team led by the government', and working under the network of the Emergency Operation Centres (EOC), and alongside a supportive global partnership at all levels, has been a major factor behind the turnaround seen in 2015 and 2016. As of June 2016, 12 polio cases have surfaced, a 60 percent reduction when compared to the same time in 2015.

Other strategies, like the expansion of community-based vaccination and health camps has helped with enhancing community ownership of programme interventions, while thousands of trained and dedicated frontline workers have ensured that 280 million children receive polio drops during nine campaigns conducted in the low-transmission season. Campaigns of inactivated polio vaccine in targeted high-risk areas of Karachi, Khyber, Peshawar and Quetta block helped in quick immunity boosting of approximately 3 million vulnerable children.