Committee promises that polio will soon be yesterday’s problem

Chairperson says that action will be taken against families refusing vaccines.

HYDERABAD: The chairperson of the President’s Oversight Committee for Polio, MNA Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho, has vowed to eradicate polio virus from Sindh over the next few months. Encouraged by a sustained decrease in the number of polio cases since 2011, the MNA said that only parts of Karachi and Hyderabad remained a challenge for the eradication of the virus.

The polio cases were brought down from 198 in Pakistan in 2011 to 58, with only four reported from Sindh, in 2012. In the first two months of the ongoing year, five cases — one each from Sindh and Punjab and three from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — have surfaced.

“We have traced the polio virus in the sewage lines of two union councils of Gadap and Gulshan-e-Iqbal and in some parts of Hyderabad,” she said at a press conference on Sunday. She claimed that it will take the government a month or two ensure complete immunisation in these areas.



Earlier, she chaired a meeting of the health and district administration officials of Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas divisions. Pechuho ordered the deputy commissioners to constitute four-member committees in all the districts to carry out spot checks during the polio drives, ensure proper cold storage, and keep record of vaccination stock and used and wasted vaccines. The committee, she added, should also closely monitor the number of children left out of the campaign and the reasons for them missing the immunisation.

The terrorist attacks and families unwilling to immunise children for religious reasons are the two main stumbling blocks, allowing the virus to thrive in the country. Pechuho, however, claimed that the government has succeeded to persuade a large number of such families.

Those who still refuse vaccination for their children will be dealt with according to the law.

Besides monitoring the polio drives, the committee is also addressing problems faced by the health officials and workers which impede the immunisation campaigns.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2013.