Official vows to maintain polio-free status of Charsadda district

CHARSADDA: The first anti-polio vaccination drive of the year has been successfully completed with achieving the set targets in the district, an official said on Tuesday.

Talking to the media, Deputy Commissioner Adeel Shah said that all the relevant departments had played a vital role in making the anti-polio campaign successful.

He said that Charsadda was a polio-free district in the year 2020 while refusal cases had been substantially decreased owing to the awareness drives, seminars and programmes run by the departments concerned about the crippling disease.

“A total of 1051 anti-polio teams were constituted in the district, which carried out a door-to-door campaign and vaccinated 2,90,000 children against the poliovirus,” the official said, adding that the awareness drives about the permanent disability caused by the virus yielded very positive results.

The parents, who earlier refused to vaccinate their children with anti-polio drops, were convinced and now they happily administered anti-polio vaccines to their kids.

Most of the refusal cases belonged to the government employees and religious families but now their confidence in the anti-polio vaccines increased because of the awareness campaigns.

The DC vowed that awareness and vaccination campaigns against the crippling poliovirus would be continued with the same zeal and zest to maintain the polio-free status of Charsadda district.