Polio team devises strategy for ‘final push’

Islamabad: Having achieved the lowest-ever case count of 8 in 2017, Pakistan is on right trajectory to finish the job in 2018, concluded the National Polio Management Team (NPMT) that met here Tuesday to review progress on National Emergency Action Plan (NEAP) and chalk out a strategic direction for the low transmission season 2018-19. Besides the Prime Minister’s Focal Person for Polio Eradication Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq, the meeting was attended by the National Coordinator Dr. Rana Safdar, provincial coordinators along with respective leads of partner organisation as well as the National and Provincial EPI directors.

Ayesha thanked the polio eradication team for its hard work and commitment. “Your involvement has been critical in achieving success,” she stated. “While an overall 97% decline in number of cases from highs of 306 in 2014 to only 8 in 2017 is encouraging, we are striving for a magical number zero,” stated Dr. Rana Safdar. “The immunity wall generated by the programme is not letting the virus paralyse our children as evident from the fact that no polio case has so far been reported in 2018. Nevertheless, despite decreased intensity of transmission, the virus continues to be challenging by appearing in environmental samples from core reservoirs of Karachi, Quetta Block and Peshawar. Intense transmission across the shared corridors with Afghanistan further leaves no space for us to relax till the job is fully done,” he stated.

The NPMT had thorough deliberations on ways to mitigate the potential risks area by area. The team observed that while interruption is in sight, the programme needs support from all segments of the society to convey the right messages to communities that still fall prey to negative propaganda against vaccination. Sadly, 5 out of 8 children paralysed by poliovirus in 2017 came from families refusing vaccination due to misconceptions. It was shared that polio vaccine remains the safest human vaccine available and over 10 billion doses administered across the globe have not resulted in even a single case of adverse reaction anywhere in the world.