KARACHI: In another attempt to get rid of menace of crippling polio disease, special Inactivated Poliovirus Vaccine (IPV) campaign kicked off in different parts of Karachi on Monday. The campaign would continue till May 10. According to Sindh Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) spokesman, special centres are established in 71 union councils (UCs) in different areas of the city. The areas included Shah Faisal Colony, Korangi, Gaddap, Liaqauatabad, North Karachi, Nazimabad, Gulberg, Bin Qasim, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Jamshed Town and Saddar Town. While talking to Daily Times Sindh EOC technical focal person Dr Ahmad Ali Shaikh said, “During the campaign, 2, 96,000 children would be targeted aging between four months to two years”. He said, “Polio is spread through person-to-person contact. When a child is infected with wild poliovirus, the virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in the intestine. It is then shed into the environment through the faeces where it can spread rapidly through a community, especially in situations of poor hygiene and sanitation”. Dr Shaikh said, “OPV is for personal immunity while on the other hand IPV accelerates the eradication from environment as well”. He said that there are two types of vaccines that protect against polio adding that under the recommendations of World Health Organisation (WHO), Inactivated Poliovirus Vaccine (IPV) is given by injection while the other type used to weakened poliovirus is Oral Poliovirus Vaccine (OPV) and is given by mouth. The two vaccines have eliminated polio from most of the world and reduced the number of cases each year from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to 359 in 2014. However, the virus continues to circulate and infect children in Pakistan and Afghanistan till now. According to End Polio Pakistan, country reported 54 cases of WPV in 2015, which is a decline of 82 percent compared to year 2014.The number of infected districts reduced from 43 in 2014 to 23 in 2015. In the present year, so far nine cases have been detected with poliovirus in Pakistan out of which four cases belong to Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) each. One case was also detected in Balochistan in same period of time. In Sindh, four cases were detected in 2016; Karachi and Jacobabad contributed one case each while two cases were reported from Shikarpur.