Polio immunisation drive held across Peshawar district

Three-day campaign to be held in 21 districts of the province.

PESHAWAR: A one-day polio immunisation campaign was conducted in 97 union councils of Peshawar district on Sunday.

Around 4,260 teams of polio workers were constituted to administer the vaccine. Moreover, the deputy commissioner deputed over 7,000 police personnel to provide security to the teams. Section 144 was also imposed across the district and a strict ban was enforced on motorcycle riding.



Another one-day campaign will be held in Charsadda district, The Express Tribune has learnt. Moreover, a three-day polio vaccination campaign will be conducted in 21 districts across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa from Monday (today). A team of 10,086 polio workers has been constituted to vaccinate 2,706,477 children in the province.

Earlier this month, a countrywide three-day emergency immunisation drive was conducted in 76 districts across Pakistan. The drive was conducted after the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) criticised Pakistan’s immunisation programme and a high-level meeting led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif renewed its pledge to eradicate polio.

However, the drive was not conducted in Peshawar due to several issues including delayed payments to health workers who had participated in earlier drives.

The number of polio cases reported in the country has reached 260. Out of these, 54 cases were reported in K-P. The number of cases reported from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) has reached 163. Nearly 26 cases were reported from Sindh, 14 have been confirmed from Balochistan and three have been reported from Punjab.

By early October this year, Pakistan broke its own 14-year-old record when it crossed 200 polio cases in one year. According to the World Health Organization, the country is at a “tipping point” as the remaining endemic countries in the world have seen a significant decline in the number of polio cases.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2014.