Daily Times

PESHAWAR: As many as 1.3 million children under five will be administered Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) in the anti-polio drive in six districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa including Peshawar from 20th March (today).

Chairing a high level meeting in this regard the Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Coordinator, Akbar Khan, informed that the upcoming campaign had been planned in Peshawar and in the northern districts of Shangla, Manshera, Abbotabad, Battagram and Kohistan as a case response to the Gilgilt Baltistan Case.

Representatives of UNICEF, WHO, BMGF and EPI were in attendance on the occasion.

He said that the campaign would be conducted in selected union councils of Abbotabad, Mansehra and in the entire districts of Peshawar, Battagram, Kohistan and Shangla.

According to EOC data, 0.862 million children under five will be vaccinated against polio in Peshawar, 83108 children in Kohistan, 17500 in Shangla, 90666 in Battagram, 85176 in Abbotabad and 69244 in Mansehra.

Akbar Khan said that stringent measures had been taken to provide security cover adding that teams had been constituted of trained health workers and were deployed at fixed and transit points.

Moreover, he went on to add that eight days inactivated polio campaign (IPV) had been planned in Kohat, Karak, Bannu and Tank districts of the province from March 22, 2017.

He informed that 191438 children aged between 4 to 23 months would be given IPV shots out of which 62092 in Kohat, 42822 in Karak, 28108 in Tank and 58422 in Bannu had been targeted for the campaign.

To reach the target 958 teams of trained health workers had been formed for the upcoming IPV campaign while 1856 community mobilisers would be engaged in the drive.