Karachi polio vaccination drive in full swing
karachi — More than 5,000 police personnel are providing security cover to 12,000 polio workers presently engaged in door to door Oral Polio Vaccination (OPV) of 2.2 million children, below the age of five years, belonging to 188 union councils.
Officials associated with Sindh Emergency Operation Centre told on Tuesday said a total number of 8.4 million children under the age of five years from across the province are being covered in the ongoing OPV campaign.
A pragmatic approach has also been adopted to counter instances of refusals through active involvement of area notables and district administration, they said.
Mentioning that elimination of polio virus from the local environs was the top priority, they said a strong monitoring mechanism has been evolved for the campaign itself.
The officials said that eight confirmed cases of polio mellitus were registered in the province last year against 12 in 2015.
“Our objective is to achieve zero polio prevalence in the current year and also to maintain it for next three consecutive years,” they said.
Meanwhile, polio vaccines will be administered to more than one million children below the age of five years in the Federally Areas (Fata) during the three-day antipolio drive, head of anti-polio campaign Dr Imtiaz has said.
Talking to VOA, he said that polio drops will be administered to more than 5.6 million children in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“The campaign has been launched in the entire country including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. More than 20,000 teams are taking part in the campaign in KP,” Dr Imtiaz said.
The campaigne is vitals as the area is teeming with polio virus due to free movements of people between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Dr Imtiaz further said that the initiative has also been launched in Afghanistan adding that concrete measures have been taken for achieving the target of the drive.