Making lives better: Polio elimination by year-end, again

Special monitoring cell will be established at the Prime Minister Secretariat.

ISLAMABAD: The government has decided to launch ‘National Emergency Action Plan’ as part of an initiative to ensure the eradication of the polio virus by the end of this year.

President Asif Ali Zardari will launch the plan on January 24 while Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani will personally monitor the initiative’s progress. A special monitoring cell will also be established at the Prime Minister Secretariat.

The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by the prime minister on Friday. The meeting was attended, among others, by Chief ministers of Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan, Governor of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Owais Ahmed Ghani and Governor of Punjab Zulfiqar Khosa.

Federal Health Secretary Khushnood Akhtar Lashari told the gathering that 73 of the 142 new polio cases were detected in Fata. He said that special measures are required, including a joint civilian-army task force, to access children in these areas.

Lashari said that provincial chief secretaries and DCOs “shall be fully responsible for the anti-polio campaign”.

Prime Minister Gilani said that the government would institute a mechanism of ownership and accountability. He said that the government would work in close collaboration with the armed forces to access children in remote tribal areas who could not be immunised because of uncertain security situation in these areas.

He said that the national task force on polio eradication would review the plan on a quarterly basis and intervene wherever necessary.

Federal Health Minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin said that the new plan was developed in consultation with national and international partners under the directives of President Zardari.

He said that failure was not an option, adding that he was encouraged by the example of Swat where, not very long ago, forces of extremism and obscurantism were resisting health initiatives such as the polio campaign.

Punjab Governor Sardar Zulfiqar Khosa said that although polio cases in Punjab had seen a marked decrease over the past year against figures for 2009, efforts would be made to remove all traces of the virus from flood-hit areas of the province.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2011.