KARACHI: In order to convert ‘persistently missed children’ refusals, Emergency Operation Centre for Polio (EOC) Sindh is conducting month-long special orientation sessions with community leaders in sensitive Union Councils of Karachi in the holy month of Ramdan. During the campaign, community engagement sessions are being held where community elders, religious leaders, political leaders, community influencers are sensitized followed by on-the-spot vaccinations. The activity is on-going in Korangi where some Union Councils of West, Central and Malir districts have already been covered. Earlier during the year, officials had admitted that three thousand “persistently missed children” whose parents always refuse to get them vaccinated against polio have emerged as the biggest challenge for the polio eradication efforts in Sindh. However Emergency Operation Centre for Polio (EOC) Sindh Coordinator Fayyaz Jatoi while welcoming the fresh move said, conversion of ‘persistently missed children’ refusals was an inimitable and result oriented approach to boost the immunity level in the children which are missed for three consecutive campaigns and these PMC children are considered to be the most vulnerable and susceptible to contract polio virus. These refusals are one of the contributing factors in positive environmental samples as well, he said. “So far, during special ‘persistently missed children’ conversion campaign, almost 93 percent refusals were covered which is a great achievement,” EOC official said. “Beside conversion of the refusals, our staff sensitized the refusals parents about the importance of vaccination and it was explained to them as to why polio drops have to be given multiple times to build their immunity and to eradicate polio from our environment,” he added. Jatoi said EOC Sindh has launched several initiatives to eradicate polio from Karachi which has produced very good results as Karachi is now polio free for more than one and half year but the off and on positive environment samples are becoming a real challenge for programmatic point of view and giving an opportunity to think out of the box ideas to interrupt polio virus transmission. After two very successful PMC conversion campaigns which were carried out in Districts West and District Central, we initiated the campaign in UC 1 and UC 2 Landhi Town, Malir in the context of positive environment sample from landhi town. UC 1 and UC 2 of Landhi Town are very famous due to their diversified features with regards to polio eradication. A larger number of priority one population is residing in these two UCs where a massive influx and out flux of population form Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and other parts of Pakistan, even from Afghanistan. Coordinator EOC Sindh while appreciating the staff efforts towards eradication of poliovirus said, “Karachi may be polio free for a year but we cannot take this for granted and must continue to cover children who have been missed in campaigns.” Published in Daily Times, June 21st, 2017.