Over 6.4m kids to receive polio vaccine in March drivev

PESHAWAR: Health and Finance Minister Taimur Khan Jhagra here on Friday administered polio drops to the children at the Police Services Hospital to formally kick off the March round of anti-polio drive in the province.

Present on the occasion were Chief Secretary Kazim Niaz, secretary Health Imtiaz Hussain Shah, Director-General of Health Dr Niaz, Additional Secretary Health (polio), Abdul Basit, WHO Team Lead, Dr Gedi and officials of the Health Department.

The health minister said the government was taking every possible measure to stop the virus transmission in the region and achieve the goal of polio-free status.

He said more than 6.4 million children under five would receive oral polio vaccine (OPV) in the upcoming anti-polio drive in the province starting from March 29.

Taimur Jhagra said that teams would observe COVID Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) during polio campaigns and any negligence in this regard would not be tolerated.

Chief Secretary Kazim Niaz emphasised the need for focusing on areas where people have misconceptions and were refusing polio vaccination to help remove the last bottlenecks in stamping out the disease from the last endemic region.

He stressed the political commitment for the polio eradication, saying the province has made good progress in the fight against polio as is evident by the decreasing number of polio cases. The chief secretary said reaching every child under five in each campaign is a must to stop the virus transmission and eradicate the disease from the last endemic region.

He said repeated campaigns were conducted in the province in view of continuous virus circulation in the environment that can hit any immune compromised and unvaccinated child.

Kazim Niaz appealed to parents to pay no heed to anti-polio propaganda and immunize their children against polio by allowing the teams to administer two drops of polio vaccine to their children and protect them from life-long paralysis.

The additional secretary Health (polio) & EOC coordinator said that the province had made good progress in the war against polio despite multiple challenges as zero wild poliovirus cases has been reported in the province in 2021 as against 22 cases in 2020.

He said that the total target of the campaign stands at 6.45 million children for which a total of 29,087 teams have been constituted out of which 25,980 are mobile teams, 1909 fixed teams, 1,524 transit teams while 146 roaming teams.

The chief secretary said that strict security measures have been taken to safeguard the workers from any untoward situation and over 40,000 law enforcers will be deployed with the teams in the campaign.

Earlier, Taimur Jhagra and Kazim Niaz administered polio drops to the children to formally kick off the March round of anti-polio drive in the province.