Daily Times

The Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) for Polio will launch a fresh round of anti-polio campaign in selected districts of Sindh from Monday (today) to July 6.

Under the program, a polio campaign is going to take place in 174 union councils of Karachi, 107 union councils of Hyderabad, 212 Union Councils of Larkana and 46 Union councils of Sukkur.

The total target across Sindh is approximately 4.43 million children under 5 years of age.

During the campaign, 1.95 million children will be given polio drops in Karachi, 0.71 million children in Hyderabad, 1.45 million in Larkana and 0.132 children under 5 years of age will be vaccinated in Sukkur.

According to EOC, the environment samples have all but cleared up while not a single case has been reported from the province in 2018.

EOC Coordinator Fayaz Jatoi said that parents need to understand that they have to vaccinate children under five on multiple occasions in order to build their immunity. “Parents must cooperate and vaccinate their child during every campaign. This is also the recommendation of all major private and government hospitals, the Pakistan Pediatric Association (PPA) as well as the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA),” said Fayaz Jataoi.

“Figures suggest that we are on the right track and if parents comply, we can eradicate polio once and for all,” he added.

In 2017, a total of 8 polio cases were reported in Pakistan. Out of these cases, 2 were from Sindh (Karachi), 3 from Balochistan, 1 from Punjab, 1 from Gilgit Baltistan and 1 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

A total of 3 polio cases have been reported in 2018 so far. All of these cases were from district Dukki, Balochistan.

Published in Daily Times, July 2^nd 2018.