Over 9.2m children in Sindh to get polio vaccine during campaign starting on Aug 15

As many as 9.25 million children in all the 29 districts of Sindh, including 2.3 million children under five years, would be administered oral polio vaccine (OPV) drops during an anti-polio campaign from August 15 to 20, 2020, said Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) officials on Wednesday.

In addition to the OPV, 8.3 million children from six months to five years of age would also be given vitamin A drops to boost their immunity levels, officials said, adding that a total of 49,781 polio workers and 8,497 area supervisors would be deployed in the province for door-to-door vaccination.

In Karachi, around 2.3 million children of less than five years of age in 192 union councils of all the six districts of the city would be administered polio drops during the campaign.

Officials said these campaigns were of utmost importance as every child must receive the OPV to save them from polio and ensure a healthy future for them. Pakistan is one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with Afghanistan and has so far reported a total of 64 cases of polio, of which 21 cases are from Sindh.

Sindh had back to back successful campaigns from December 2019 to March 2020 which had gone a long way to put the anti-polio programme on track. However, since the outbreak of COVID-19, no campaigns could be conducted while routine immunisation was also severely affected, leaving an immunity gap which must immediately be addressed as children were more susceptible to the virus than before.

According to a spokesperson for the Emergency Operation Centre Sindh, in addition to taking steps to deal with the pandemic, immunisation against vaccine-preventable diseases must be ensured to prevent childhood diseases. Children could be saved from diseases like polio, measles, typhoid and others through vaccination.

Following the halt in global polio campaigns from April to June as a result of COVID-19, Sindh conducted a small-scale campaign in District East and District West in Karachi during the month of July that covered 260,700 children under five. The campaign was conducted through following all the WHO-recommended COVID-19 precautionary measures and the same would be followed during the polio drive during August.

“These safety measures mainly include All COVID-19 precautionary measures to be followed during training of workers. All polio workers and supervisors will use a face mask and hand sanitiser during the field work to reduce the risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19,” the spokesperson said, adding that frequency and duration of evening review meetings at district levels would be reduced to alternative days and maximum of one hour respectively.

“No more than 10 persons will participate in evening review meetings,” he said, adding that in order to make up for the gap in campaigns, the EOC Sindh requested all the parents to cooperate with their teams and let their under-five-year-old children be administered two drops of the OPV every time they were offered.

The door-to-door campaigns would also be utilised to raise awareness on about the COVID-19 prevention and refer mothers and children for other essential vaccinations and services.

The Pakistan Paediatric Association, medical experts across the world and major religious scholars across Pakistan and the region have endorsed the OPV, which is the safest and most effective for not only preventing polio but also eradicating it from the environment.