Polio drive to cover 8.3mn children begins in Sindh

A drive focusing on immunising 8.3 million children against the polio virus, in Sindh, was inaugurated by city commissioner Ejaz Ahmed at the Sobhraj Maternity Hospital, on Monday.

Around 2.2 million children would be vaccinated only in Karachi. The campaign would go on till October 1 in the entire province.

According to the spokesperson for Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) Sindh, 9,000 teams of vaccinators had been deployed under the protection of 5,300 police and 200 Rangers personnel.

The drive on the inaugural day, he informed, went smoothly in the entire province as deployment of teams and security personnel was timely.

The city commissioner informed media personnel at the inaugural ceremony that all 188 union councils of the city would be covered. He urged all parents to get their children vaccinated against the dreaded virus.

The city commissioner stated that due to advocacy and joint efforts of the public and the authorities, the number of vaccination refusals had considerably reduced and added that positive results were achieved after involving community elders and religious scholars in the fight against polio in Pakistan.

The chief of Karachi Task Force for Polio Eradication maintained that strict security arrangements had been made in Karachi alone for the security of polio vaccination teams and claimed that thousands of police personnel had been deployed to ensure protection and safety of the vaccinators.

The EOC spokesman further added that this year Sindh had so far witnessed only four polio cases one in Karachi, two in Shikarpur and another in Jaccobabad. He said the number of cases had fallen by over 80 percent from previous years.

He maintained that even though there had been improvements, there was no room for complacency and the entire nation had to cooperate in the final phase of polio eradication.

He said polio control rooms in all districts should be activated under the supervision of district councils, children missed in previous campaigns should be focused upon. He said the pillars of a successful campaign were sound monitoring, surveillance and accountability.

Deputy Commissioner South Saleem Rajput, coordinator for Karachi Task Force for Polio Eradication Dr Nusrat Ali, Salman Ahmed and others were also in attendance.