Door-to-door Pulse Polio drive begins in Sangam City
PRAYAGRAJ: Officials of the district health department have launched a seven-day pulse polio campaign during which they have set a target to administer polio drops to around 8.5 lakh children below the age of five years.
On the first day, ‘Polio Booth Day’ was observed where the infants were administered antipolio drops at around 3,397 booths of the district on Sunday.
Chief medical officer, Prayagraj, Dr Ashu Pandey, said that the drive began at Dufferin Hospital by chief development officer (CDO) Gaurav Kumar.
The door-to-door campaigns, however, formally started from Monday for those children who could not reach the booths.
Even after this, if any eligible child is left out, they will also be administered the anti-polio drop dose on the sixth and last day of the drive, they added.
Additional chief medical officer and district immunisation officer Dr Teerath Lal said, “We have set a target to administer polio drops to as many as 8,59,978 children below the age of five years in the district and for that, a total of 3,397 booths were set up across the district on Sunday.
“The department has also constituted a total of 2,022 teams which started conducting door-to-door campaign to cover each and every house from Monday.
“At least 60 mobile and 57 transit teams have also been constituted to achieve the target.”
On Sunday, an active strain of poliovirus was confirmed in the drain water of Gaughat in Sangam
city. The water samples were examined by the health department and World Health Organisation (WHO) team, officials said.
Regarding polio mutant strain found, joint director (health) Dr BK Mishra said the strain of the poliovirus found does not affect much and there is no need to panic. “The virus is excreted through the faeces and reaches the drains,” he said.
Dr Mishra said people are avoiding polio drops whereas they should ensure that their kids take the drops and get protected. The WHO declared India polio-free on March 27, 2014.
The last case of polio type-1 was found in Howrah district of West Bengal in 2011. After this, the WHO had removed the name of the country from the list of polio affected countries in 2012. There are three types of poliovirus WPV-1, WPV-2 and WPV-3.
The last case of WPV-1 was reported on January 13, 2009 in Moradabad. The last case of WPV-2 was found on October 24, 1999.