Punjab also confirms 2020’s first case of poliovirus

LAHORE: Year 2020’s first case of wild poliovirus (WPV) has been confirmed in Dera Ghazi Khan district of Punjab.

“A child from DG Khan’s Taunsa village, aged 8 months, has been diagnosed with polio,” the Punjab polio programme confirmed on Thursday. Head of the polio programme in Punjab Sundas Irshad said the programme was in the process of verifying vaccination history of the child.

She said the children, who miss vaccination in polio campaigns as well as routine immunization schedules, are vulnerable to the crippling disease. “A polio eradication campaign will be held in the district from March 16,” she added. A five-day national anti-polio immunization campaign from February 17 to February 21 immunized 19.9 million children in Punjab and 39.6 million across the country. With the detection of a new case in Punjab, total number of polio cases in the country has reached 21 in the current year. Eleven cases have been reported in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, six in Sindh, and three in Balochistan.

Similarly, nine cases of cVDPV2 polio have been confirmed in the year 2020 so far, including eight in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and one in Punjab. The population-wise biggest province of the country reported 12 polio cases in the year 2019, and total number of cases reported across country stood at 146, making it the worst one in the last five years.

In the previous year, as many as 22 cases of cVDPV2 polio were confirmed including 16 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, four in Gilgit-Baltistan and one each in Punjab and Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).

A total of two polio cases were confirmed in Punjab among overall 54 cases in 2015; no case was reported in Punjab among a total of 20 cases in 2016; one case was confirmed in Punjab among overall 8 cases in the country in 2017; and none was reported in Punjab among 12 cases confirmed in the country in 2018. The polio programme in-charge, Sundas Irshad, said Punjab is the recipient of huge migrant population from reservoir districts which increases the risk of virus transmission. She assured parents that polio vaccine was safe, efficacious and approved by the government’s drug regulatory authorities.