Special polio drive commences in Sindh

Karachi

Amid high security provided by the Sindh police and the paramilitary officials, a six-day supplementary polio vaccination drive commenced in the province on Monday morning with the aim of covering 51union councils of Karachi and 12 districts of Sindh. 

Over 2,000 police personnel sealed off the selected areas where vaccinators went from house to house to administer Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) drops to children under the age of five.

As many as 865,000 children are to be vaccinated in the selected 51 UCs of Karachi from July 25 to 30, while 3,363 children would be vaccinated in the 12 selected districts of rural Sindh.

Polio eradication authorities said they had deployed 2,743 teams of polio vaccinators in addition to 642 area in-charges for the city's 51 UCs, while around 2,000 police personnel have been deployed to ensure security of the vaccinators and other officials.

Environmental samples for polio have been found negative for the last three months, showing significant progress in provincial authorities’ struggle against the dreaded disease.

According to polio officials, no routine polio drive was scheduled to be held in the month of July. The ongoing campaign has been initiated as a supplementary drive to curb the virus in the selected UCs in view of the history of polio cases in those areas.

All these 51 UCs have their own Community Based Vaccinators (CBVs), who have the record of children under the age of five in their own UCs. No mobile teams of vaccinators would be used in these UCs for vaccination but strict security arrangements are being made by the police and other security agencies for the protection of community-based vaccinators during the campaign.

“Although there was no vaccination drive planned in July this year, authorities decided to conduct a special vaccination drive in 51 UCs of Karachi and other high risk areas in Sindh from July 25 to 30, which has been started smoothly without any untoward incident," said a spokesman for the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) Sindh.

He said the special supplementary drive was launched at a time when environmental samples in Sindh had been testing negative for the last three months, which showed that the virus was not found circulating in the environment of the Sindh province.

According to him, a total of 504,737 children in seven UCs of Baldia Town, four UCs of Orangi Town, four UCs of SITE, one UC each of Liaquatabad and Gulberg, two UCs of North Nazimabad, four UCs of North Karachi, one UC of Saddar, three UCs of Kemari, three UCs of Bin Qasim, four UCs of Landhi and three UCs of Korangi Towns would be vaccinated during the drive.

Similarly, 359,981 children would be vaccinated in Muzaffarabad and Muslimabad UCs of Landhi, five UCs of Gadap, one UC each of Baldia, SITE and Orangi and four UCs of Gulshan-e-Iqbal.

Apart from Karachi, polio vaccination drive in 12 districts of Sindh has also been launched in Sukkur, Ghotki, Khairpur, Larkana, Shikarpur, Jacobabad, Kashmoe, Kamber, Dadu, Nawabshah, Sanghar and Nausheroferoz districts, he said and added that a total of 2.498 million children would be vaccinated in these districts.

The spokesman maintained that highly educated, trained and community-based vaccinators were being deployed for the vaccination drive in the selected areas.

He added these vaccinators had all the data of children, who required to be given polio drops, while they had also contacted community elders for cooperating in the vaccination drive.

As far as the security is concerned, a high level security plan had been devised by the police and other security agencies in the concerned UCs, he said and added that hundreds of police personnel as well as paramilitary force officials had been deployed to ensure protection of vaccination of drive.

Officials of security agencies including military officials and high ups of police were monitoring the situation from the EOC, he added.