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Friday March 29, 2024

Focus on refusing parents as year’s second polio drive begins

By Our Correspondent
February 20, 2018

Without any formal or ceremonial inauguration, the second polio drive of the year, with a special focus on targeting refusing parents and missing children, started here on Monday, during which 2.4 million children under the age of five years would be administered oral polio vaccine drops.

Polio vaccine drives are usually launched in a ceremonial manner with either the Karachi commissioner or any other senior official administering oral polio vaccine to a child at some health facility in the city to give the impression that government gives importance to the cause of polio eradication, but this time round, not even a deputy commissioner or a district health officer (DHO) was asked to inaugurate the campaign in the city.

Polio Eradication Initiative officials in Sindh said the drive would continue till February 23, and as many as 12,000 vaccinators, lady health workers and supervisors would be deployed to vaccinate the children. The Karachi police have committed 5,000 personnel to accompany the vaccinators, who would go from door to door in 247 union councils in the six districts of the metropolis.

Eight children had been confirmed affected by the polio virus in Pakistan in 2017, of which two cases were reported from Karachi. Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) officials termed it a ‘historic low’ for the country as well as for the province of Sindh, while so far this year no polio case has been reported from any part of the country.

The coordinator for Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) for Polio Eradication in Sindh, Fayaz Jatoi, said that they were now in a good position to eradicate the disease as environment samples in northern Sindh were found to be negative for the virus, and they were also clearing the virus from Karachi.

“We have come a long way to achieve historically low cases, but more work needs to be done and we must improve further. The teams must continue their hard work and parents must come forward to vaccinate their children to save them from the scourge of polio,” he said on the first day of the drive in Karachi.

“No child should suffer from a vaccine preventable disease and it is our collective responsibility to make sure all children are vaccinated, so we have a healthy future for our generations,” he added.

The Emergency Operation Centre for Polio had conducted a campaign in all districts of Sindh except Karachi last week and vaccinated approximately 6.3 million children across the province.

Earlier, security measures were discussed for the security of polio workers last week at a meeting chaired by Karachi Commissioner Aijaz Ahmed Khan and it was decided that police and other law-enforcing agencies would be requested to ensure adequate security measures to provide a conducive environment for the polio vaccination drive.

During the meeting, attended representatives of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Unicef, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rotary Club, in addition to the additional commissioner, deputy commissioners and district health officers of six Karachi districts, and Polio Eradication Initiative officials in Sindh, various strategies were discussed to minimise refusal cases as still a sizeable number of parents were not allowing their children to have oral polio vaccine.

Officials claimed that it had been decided that community leaders, elders and volunteers would be engaged in the drive to minimise refusal cases while a special focus would be paid onto approaching missing children.