Daily Times

LANDIKOTAL: A Landikotal resident appealed to the government to conduct inquiry of his daughter’s death who allegedly died of polio drops administered her five days ago.

Farooq Shinwari, the father of four-month-old Safoora Bibi, flanked by Haji Aziz Shinwari and other family members told a press conference on Tuesday that polio workers administered polio drops to his daughter on December 22. He said his daughter was healthy at the time when she was administered polio drops. He said as she was vaccinated with the polio drops she started vomiting and a bad smell started from her mouth and urine.

Farooq said his daughter was not stable for since she had polio drops and breathed her last on December 26. He threatened that his family members would not allow administering polio drops to their children until the government not provides them justice.

When contacted agency surgeon doctor Niaz Afridi said that the same kind of incident was also happened with two children in Bara a few days ago. He said they had sent blood of the affected families to Islamabad and found no harm thing in the polio drops. He said the death of those children might be of natural as they were quite sure that there were no harmful ingredients in the vaccines to cause deaths of children.

He said on the directives of health officials they have already halted anti-polio campaign in Khyber Agency to reach the real cause of the children’s death occurred in Bara and Landikotal.

Polio supervisor Saeed Khan also rejected the allegations leveled on the polio workers said that some of the left wing people in Khyber Agency want to defame and stop polio eradication campaign. He said it was totally wrong that a purified polio drops that had made to save lives could harm children.

Saeed claimed that they were very close to completely root out polio virus from Pakistan. Asking media for their support, Saeed Shinwari said the whole Pakistani nation was in their back support of the polio eradication program to wash out polio virus and protect their next generation from such lethal virus.

After the deaths of few children allegedly due to polio drops has raised concerns among the parents who were regularly administering polio vaccines to their children. People now started debates in homes and other public places that whether they should let the health workers to give polio drops to their children or not.