Daily Times

Anti-measles campaign in tribal districts and sub-divisions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province will start from October 15 (Monday) under the supervision and security of deputy commissioners, district health officers and security forces, KP’s Emergency Operation Center said on Saturday.

The 12-day anti-measles campaign will focus on reaching a total of 0.9 million children between the age of 09 to 59 months in seven tribal districts and six sub-divisions of KP for administering anti-measles vaccine.

A total of 1247 teams (972 outreach, 241 fixed and 34 mobile) have been assigned the job. Director Health Services Tribal Districts Dr Jawad Habib said that “providing health facilities to every citizen of tribal district is our utmost duty and this campaign is one of the efforts to save our children from often life-threatening measles disease”.

Dr Habib further said, “All the necessary arrangements have been made to ensure quality in the anti-measles campaign but now the parents have to fulfill their responsibility by bringing their children to nearby vaccination centers for administering anti-measles injection and making the campaign successful and effective.” He emphasized that the outreach teams should reach all the target population and the community should extent all-out support to the vaccinators by bringing out their children to the vaccination centers for vaccination.

Increasing number of cases of measles throughout the country as well as in tribal districts and sub-divisions of KP in 2017 forced the government to launch anti measles campaign all over the country.

Published in Daily Times, October 14^th 2018.