Daily Times

Deputy Commissioner (DC)IslamabadIrfan Nawaz Memon on Monday claimed that over 60 percent cases of polio vaccine refusals were covered to ensure the federal capital a polio-free city.

A special campaign was launched during the last week to cover the chronic refusals that had left during the last countrywide campaign, he said. Talking to APP, he said there were 350 cases of refusals out of which 225 successfully covered while rest of it underway during the ongoing polio vaccination campaign kicked off today. Some 408,000 children under the age of five years will administer polio vaccine during the week-long drive, he said adding that around 2200 polio workers were engaged to make the drive successful. All possible steps will be taken to ensure that every child in Islamabad was administered the polio drops, he said. “We try our best and even a representative of district administration, union council staff, locals and polio staff along with assistant commissioner was sent to the house to convince the resident to vaccinate their children. Polio vaccination is a continuous process so no one can escape from it,” he observed.

The DC requested the citizens to cooperate with polio teams as it is safe and get their child vaccinated to eradicate the epidemic in the federal capital. To a query, he said some people believed that they should administer polio drops to their children privately, in such case, citizens need to provide a certificate that they had administered the vaccine to their children. Meanwhile, the district administration Bannu imposed Section-144 in the district, banning pillion ridding, aerial firing, displaying and carrying of weapons, use of tinted glasses and unregistered motorbikes during polio vaccinationcampaign for 10 days till May 30 to avoid any untoward incident. A notification issued by deputy commissioner Bannu said that the decision was taken in the light of threat alert by District Police Officer, recent terrorist attacks, upcoming anti-polio campaign and prevailing security situation in Bannu. The notification said that strict security measures had been taken for anti-polio campaign on the advice of District Police Officer to avoid any untoward incident in the district. The government also claimed that if someone violated the law, strict action would be taken under section-188 of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).