All set for countrywide polio drive today

LAHORE: All is set for national immunisation drive against polio starting all over Pakistan, including Punjab on Monday (today), a polio programme spokesperson confirmed on Sunday. The national drive will continue for five days till November 4.

The polio programme has constituted 48,000 teams who will go every household to vaccinate children. As per a handout issued by the Punjab polio programme, delivery of vaccine to all districts of Punjab has been completed.

The districts have also been provided huge quantities of masks and sanitizers to prevent workers from Covid-19. Polio teams will vaccinate more than 20 million children five years of age during the campaign.

The polio programme has constituted 4,900 teams in Lahore alone who will provide polio eradication drops to over 1.8 million children in the city. In her statement head of the polio programme Ms Sundas Irshad expressed confidence that the polio campaign will help control virus transmission.

Ms Sundas, however, sounded fears about polio virus prevalence in Punjab and appealed to the parents to cooperate with polio teams who will be going house to house to save their children from disability.

"Despite the current Covid-19 pandemic, the government will ensure that polio virus transmission is broken," the head of the polio programme reiterated.

Ms Irshad pledged to go to every district to monitor the performance of various cadres of polio teams involved in campaign. "Next few months are very important to break polio virus transmission," Ms Sundas said. "In order to ensure that high quality campaigns are conducted, I will personally visit every district," the head of the polio programme pledged.

Ms Irshad further said that during the polio campaigns she will remain present in field and ensure that there were no children left without vaccine.

"Missed children are vulnerable to the polio virus and at the same time run risk of carrying it to other parts of the province. So always vaccinate your child in polio campaigns", the head of the Punjab polio programme observed. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries left which are polio-endemic.