Polio drive to vaccinate 6 million children in Sindh begins today

A province-wide polio vaccination drive will begin in 24 districts of Sindh, including Karachi, from today with the aim to immunise nearly 6 million children under the age of five against the crippling poliovirus, the provincial Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) for polio eradication said on Sunday.

The campaign will continue for seven days in Karachi and five days in other districts of Sindh, including Dadu, Jacobabad, Kambar, Larkana, Shikarpur, Sukkur, Sujawal and Thatta.

“The target is 5,973,287 children, out of which 2.4 million children are in Karachi,” an official of the EOC said, adding that more than 50,000 frontline workers will take part in the campaign. These frontline workers include as many as 12,000 polio vaccinators in Karachi while 5,000 police personnel will provide them security, the official added. He mentioned that other state agencies and institutions would also be involved in the campaign.

The total case count for polio in the country in 2017 was eight out of which two cases were from Karachi, which is a historical low for the country and the province. There have been zero cases this year in Sindh, while three cases have been reported from Balochistan.

Coordinator for the EOC in Sindh, Fayaz Jatoi, said they were in a good position to eradicate polio as the environment samples in the city are showing good results because of repeated and intense polio campaigns.

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

“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," Jatoi added. He further appealed to the public to have their children vaccinated with every campaign as it is necessary for them to develop immunity against polio.