Polio virus detected in Landhi’s sewage samples

Hundreds of families from Fata living in Karachi refuse to have children vaccinated
on first day of anti-polio drive in protest against poor living conditions;

allow their children to be vaccinated after officials assure them

their grievances will be addressed

Health authorities said on Monday that polio virus was detected in sewage samples collected in Landhi, Karachi while on the same day when a three-day anti-polio campaign was launched, hundreds of families, mainly internally displaced persons from Fata living in the city, refused to have their children vaccinated in protest against their poor living conditions. However, they allowed their children to be vaccinated after authorities assured them that their problems would be addressed.

“For the last one year, no polio case has been reported in Karachi and environmental samples were also negative during this period,” said an official of the Sindh Emergency Operations Center.

“It’s a major setback that polio virus has been found in sewage samples collected in Landhi,” he added.

‘From Pishin’

The official said the virus found in the sewage sample from Landhi had come from Pishin, a Pashtun-dominated area of Balochistan and presently the hub of the polio virus.

“The virus is being exported to other parts of the country from Pishin,” he maintained.

“Immediate measures are being taken to eliminate the virus from Landhi and its adjoining areas by mass vaccination of children there.”

Refusal cases

On the first day of the year’s first vaccination drive, hundreds of families living in make-shift homes in Sohrab Goth, a part of the UC-12 Gulshan-e-Iqbal, refused to have their children vaccinated until their issues including poor living conditions and lack of clean drinking water and public schools were addressed.

The IDPs from the tribal areas and gypsies living there said the because of the lack of clean drinking water and public schools, their children sick and uneducated.

“What does the government wish to achieve by giving polio vaccine drops to our children when it isn’t providing them with water and schools,” the mother of a child told reporters there.

Polio vaccinators immediately reported the mass refusal to the EOC Sindh and deputy commissioner (East) Asif Jan Siddiqui along with the assistant commissioner and other officials rushed to scene.

The officials assured the residents that their problems would be addressed after the vaccination campaign. They said the public schools in the area would be made functional and water would be provided to them through tankers.

“The IDPs and gypsies allowed the vaccinators to administer polio oral drops to their children after we convinced them that their grievances will be addressed,” deputy commissioner (East) Asif Siddiqui told reporters. But some residents said while the district administration was assuring them that they would be provided with basic facilities, they were also being threatened that cases would be registered against them and their homes would be razed as they were built illegally on public and private properties.

Anti-polio campaign

Health officials said 8.4 million children less than five years of age would be vaccinated during the current National Immunisation Days drive in all districts of Sindh including 2.2 million in all 188 union councils of Karachi.

The national immunisation drive has been launched simultaneously in all the provinces and tribal areas of the country except those districts and areas which are inaccessible because of weather conditions including heavy snowfall.

Around 5,000 police personnel have been deployed to provide security to around 12,000 polio vaccinators in Karachi and a monitoring mechanism has been set up by the Sindh Emergency Operation Centre and its international partners.

Sindh EOC coordinator Fayaz Jatoi said there had been a drastic improvement in the programme in the last few years with polio cases reducing from 306 in 2014 to 20 in 2016.