Pakistan launches new anti-polio drive
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities launched a new nationwide anti-polio drive on Monday amid a spike in new cases among children, health officials said.
It is the sixth such campaign this year and will last for five days, aiming to inoculate children under the age of 5 in high-risk areas.
The newest drive was aimed at Islamabad and in the high-risk districts in eastern Punjab and southwestern Balochistan province. A similar campaign will be launched in the northwest in the first week of December.
Under the programme, the vaccine would be administered in nine districts of the eastern Punjab province, eight districts of southern Sindh, and six districts of southwestern Balochistan province, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
More than 100,000 trained and dedicated healthworkerswouldbeengagedinthevaccination drive to inoculate the targeted children at their doorstep, according to the Ministry of Health.
According to the Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho, around 2,943 male and 113 female security personnel have been deployed in Sindh province.
Pakistan regularly launches polio campaigns despite atacks on workers and police assigned to inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilise children. Since April, Pakistan has registered 20 new polio cases and the outbreak has been seen as a blow to the efforts to eradicate the disease, which can cause severe paralysis in children.
Pakistan came close to eradicating polio last year, when only one case was reported.
Since then, the new cases have been reported in the northwest, forcing the government to launch anti-polio drives at small intervals in high-risk areas across the country. The last such campaign was launched earlier this month.
Pakistan’s anti-polio campaigns are also supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
which last month pledged $1.2 billion to the effort to end polio worldwide. The money will be used for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s
strategy through 2026. The initiative is aimed at ending the polio virus in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two endemic countries, the foundation said last month.
Meanwhile, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said that it was a great achievement for his government that no polio case has been reported over the last 30 months.