Anti-polio campaign launched across Pakistan

The government of Pakistan has launched an anti-polio campaign across the country today (Monday). 

While speaking to Associated Press, Dr Rana Safdar, the campaign's national coordinator, remarked that the campaign was launched on Monday amid tight security in 89 districts and towns with a total of 110,000 health workers who will fan out vaccinate 19.2 million children.

Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a crippling childhood disease caused by the polio virus and preventable through immunisation. Affecting mostly children under the age of five, polio — which has no cure and can only be prevented by giving a child multiple vaccine doses — can lead to irreversible paralysis.

Islamabad

Over 0.3 million minors will be administered the polio vaccination in the federal capital. The authorities have appointed over 5,000 workers for the anti-polio drive. 

Punjab

In Punjab, 4,700 teams are in place to execute the campaign which will target over 1.7 million children across Lahore, a district administration official told Geo News. 

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Deputy Commissioner Lahore Anwar-ul-Haq said assistant commissioners and sub-registrars are monitoring the teams.

Appropriate security measures have been taken to protect the teams throughout the three-day campaign that will end on August 8, said DC Haq. 

Sindh

More than 2.4 million children will be targetted in the anti-polio drive in the provincial capital, Karachi.

According to a spokesperson of tthe emergency operation cell, the anti-polio campaign will last for seven days. 

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

A five-day campaign against polio was launched in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa today, Geo News reported.

The anti-polio campaign will target 16 high-risk districts, with the target of administering polio vaccine to 36, 27,000 minors.

In Peshawar city alone, KP's health ministry aims to administer the vaccine to 816,000 minors.

A total of 13 teams have been formed to execute the campaign.

Balochistan

A three-day anti-polio campaign has kicked off in 19 districts of Balochistan today.

More than 1.7 million children will be administered polio drops in the sparsely populated province. 

According to Coordinator Anti-Polio Emergency Operation Centre Syed Faisal Ahmed, around 6,067 mobile teams are in place to execute the drive. 

Teams will also be present at 413 transit points and 521 other points.

Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, that suffers from endemic polio, a virus that can cause paralysis or death.

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The country continues to battle polio for the past several years and is close to completely eradicating the disease. The number of cases declined from 306 in 2014 to 54 in 2015, 20 in 2016 and eight in 2017. In 2018, three polio cases have so far been reported – all from Balochistan.

A country must have no cases for three consecutive years in order to be considered to have eradicated polio by the World Health Organisation.

According to the WHO, the number of polio cases worldwide has fallen by more than 99 per cent since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 cases then to 22 reported cases in 2017.