Daily Times

PESHAWAR: According to an official handout, three-day anti-polio campaign will kick off in the Federal Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Frontier Regions today (Monday.

The active campaign will continue for three days and would be followed by a catch-up campaign of missed children, under the supervision and security provided by political agents, commissioners and security forces.

In the entire FATA and Frontier Regions, 982030 children below the age of five years will be vaccinated by 3996 teams, comprising 3599 mobile teams, 292 fixed teams and 105 transit teams. The campaign is focused on reaching and vaccinating every child for polio.

So far only two polio cases have been reported from South Waziristan Agency in FATA and the FRs. Both the polio cases were from among the displaced families which recently returned to South Waziristan Agency from Afghanistan.

To avoid the missing children of Temporarily Displaced Families, vaccinators and health teams are assigned to transit points at the entry of FATA Agencies and Frontier Regions for vaccinating children on travel. It needs to be mentioned here that in FATA polio cases are on the decline starting 2014, 179 polio cases were reported, in 2015 16 polio cases were reported while in 2016 only two polio cases have so far been registered.

The FATA Polio Task Force Meeting will also be held on Monday September 26 at the Governor’s House. It will be chaired by the honorable Governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Iqbal Zafar Jhagra.

The Prime Minister’s Focal Person for PEI, Coordinator National EOC, the Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) FATA, the Coordinator EOC FATA, political agents and representatives of partner organisations, including the UNICEF, the BMGF, the WHO and Rotary will also be attending the meeting.

The Governor KP will be presented with the facts and figures about the progress made regarding polio eradication efforts in FATA. The challenges faced and the upcoming campaigns will also be discussed at the meeting.