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Thursday March 28, 2024

Year’s last anti-polio drive starts as Sindh set to report lowest cases

By M. Waqar Bhatti
December 10, 2018

The Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) for Polio in Sindh will launch the last anti-polio campaign of 2018 on Monday (today), which will last till December 16 in Karachi and December 13 in the rest of Sindh.

Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho will inaugurate the campaign at Hilal-e-Ahmer Hospital, Teen Talwaar at 9am. The population of children under five years targeted for the campaign is approximately 8.9 million, of whom approximately 2.3 million children belong to Karachi.

More than 50,000 workers will take part in the drive across the province. In Karachi alone, more than 9,000 community health workers supported by 2,300 area in-charges will administer polio drops to the children. Approximately 5,000 personnel of law enforcement agencies will provide security to the anti-polio teams.

Health officials have been terming the year’s last anti-polio campaign extremely important because if figures of polio cases remain the same, Sindh will report its lowest polio case count in its history as the province has reported just one new polio case in 2018 which was from Gadap in Karachi.

In comparison to 2018, two new polio cases were reported in Sindh in 2017, eight in 2016, 12 in 2015 and 30 in 2014.

EOC Sindh Coordinator Umer Farooq Bullo said: “The district polio control rooms, health officials of the government of Sindh and polio teams have done a fantastic job to bring the case count down but our goal is to reach zero count; hence, we must continue to work hard and focus on areas where the virus springs up such as UC 4 Gadap. We have established a model EPI centre in this area to increase routine immunisation and will implement other programmes there in order to improve healthcare for its residents.”

There has been a 99% reduction in the polio cases in the country since 2014. The total count of new polio cases in Pakistan in 2018 was eight, while it was also eight in 2017, 20 in 2016, 54 in 2015 and 306 in 2014.

“We have reduced cases through intensive polio drives but we are facing refusals because of repeated vaccination. We would like to take this opportunity to inform the masses that repeated vaccination is necessary for polio eradication and to ensure that children are safe from polio. We request parents to cooperate with the polio teams and secure the future of their children by giving them two drops of the polio vaccine,” the EOC coordinator said.

The Pakistan Paediatric Association and medical experts also recommend that every child must be administered two drops of the polio vaccine every time it is offered. Meanwhile, religious scholars belonging to all the schools of thought of Islam too have endorsed the polio programme and given Fatawa asking the people to vaccinate their children to protect them from life-long disability.