Daily Times

LAHORE: The government would hold National Immunisation Days (NIDs) from September 26 to 28 across Punjab with special emphasis on Lahore and Rawalpindi due to discovery of positive environmental samples in August.

Emergency Operation Coordinator (EOC) Dr Munir Ahmed revealed this in a media briefing at the Directorate General Health Services on Thursday. With the coordinator of Emergency Operation Centre, teams from World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) attended the briefing.

Ahmed said the campaign would target approximately 18.4 million children of below five years of age across the province, adding that Punjab was holding NIDs for fourth time this year, as the first three were held in January, March and May respectively.

“Punjab has had a total of six positive environmental samples this year, two in Rawalpindi (April and August), two in Faisalabad (February and July), one in Lahore (August) and one in Dera Ghazi Khan (May),” Dr Ahmed, who is also the Director of EPI, informed the media. He said in independent assessment conducted to measure quality of campaigns (LQAS), Punjab has seen at least 85% or more passed results.

“The world has never been in a better position to eradicate polio. Pakistan is the key to global eradication, and we now have an opportunity to mitigate the menace of polio once and for all,” he said, adding that permanent transit points have been set up at inter-provincial borders to vaccinate children from other provinces.

He said Punjab has not witnessed a single polio case so far this year while the country has had 14 polio cases so far – seven in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, five in Sindh, one each in Balochistan and FATA.

Highlighting the response to diphtheria outbreak in Kasur, he informed that a mop up campaign in Kasur was being conducted and so far around 16,000 children have been vaccinated. He said the DHQ hospital was declared as a sentinel site and there was no shortage of vaccine or anti-diphtheria serum in the province. “Standard preventive measures like antibiotic provision, vaccination, active surveillance and case detection as per SOPs are being followed,” he added.

He said a total of 12 children died so far this year, adding that as per the recommendation of National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group, preparations for booster dose were being made for children of above five-year age group.

He stated that Punjab was on track to claim maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination, adding that the WHO mission would visit DG Khan and Okara for validation in this regard in October. Further, vaccine for Rota Virus would be introduced in Lahore, Kasur, Khushab, M Bahuddin, Multan and Muzaffar Garh in November and rest of the province by January 2017, Ahmed concluded.