Over 5.8m kids to be vaccinated during anti-polio drive

PESHAWAR: A three-day anti-polio drive is to be kicked off in all districts of the province from December 10 wherein 5.88 million children would be vaccinated against poliovirus.

This was disclosed at the readiness meeting held here Friday at the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with Coordinator its Abid Khan Wazir in the chair.

Director Expanded Programme on Immunization KP Dr Akram Shah, Lead Team WHO Dr Abdi Nasir, Team Lead UNICEF Dr Johar, Team Lead N-Stop Dr Ijaz Ali Shah, Technical Focal Person BMGF Dr Imtiaz Ali Shah and other relevant staff were also present on the occasion.

The meeting was informed that a total of 5.88 million children would be administered polio drops in the upcoming campaign for which 22135 teams have been constituted out of which 19334 were mobile, 1623 were fixed and 996 were transit.

More than 30,000 law-enforcing personnel were deployed at various plugging points and with teams to ensure security to the teams, the meeting was briefed.

Speaking on the occasion, Abid Wazir directed the staff to ensure that every child was vaccinated against the crippling disease, saying that teams were missing children which was why the virus was still circulating in the environment.

He also directed for providing a safe environment to the teams by ensuring extra security measures, adding that strict monitoring system should also be in place to ensure quality campaign. Abid Wazir said that polio is becoming a stigma for the nation and it is a national emergency that needs to be taken seriously and addressed on a war footing.

He said that polio was the government’s programme and not of any foreign NGOs as wrongly perceived by some of the people as partners were only providing technical support. He added every segment of society would have to play their role in clearing misconceptions of the community and rid the region of the disease for good.