Balochistan campaign: Fresh anti-polio drive to target 2.4m kids

QUETTA: A three-day anti-polio campaign will be launched on Monday, covering 30 districts of Balochistan, vaccinating a target population of 2,475,389 children aged less than five years, a senior health official said.

During a press briefing on Saturday, provincial coordinator of the Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) Faisal Ahmed said that his organisation is hoping to bring down the number of unvaccinated children to zero at union council level during current and upcoming campaigns.

Ahmed said that a total of 6,647 teams were deployed, including 5,182 mobile teams, 860 fixed facilitation points and 605 transit points for administering anti-polio drops.

According to him, there were only 14 polio cases reported in Pakistan in the nine months of this year, resulting in a 76 per cent reduction against 38 cases reported in the same period last year.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th, 2016.