Public heath: Polio vaccination drive starts today

LAHORE: The Health Department has launched a polio vaccination drive which will open on Monday (today) in Faisalabad, Chinot, Hafizabad, Toba Tek Singh, Jhang and Okara after the virus was found in samples collected from Faisalabad’s drains. The drive will end on March 30. “The drive is being launched as a precautionary step,” a Health Department spokesman told The Express Tribune. He said 2.4 million children would be immunised. He said 8,000 teams had been mobilised across the target districts. “A rigorous campaign will eradicate this virus once and for all,” he said. Talking to The Express Tribune, Young Doctor Association spokesman Aftab Ashraf said vaccination drives would remain useless unless a mass awareness campaign was launched. “The government has initiated hundreds of rounds for eliminating the virus but our children are still vulnerable to it,” he said. He said Pakistan was one of only three countries in the world where polio remained an endemic.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 28^th,  2016.