Three-day drive: Anti-polio campaign kicks off nationwide

As many as 1.02m children will be inoculated in FATA, 1.6m in Balochistan

PESHAWAR/ QUETTA: As many as 1.02 million children will be inoculated against the poliovirus across the federally administered tribal areas in the three-day polio campaign starting from today (Wednesday).

Children below the age of five will be vaccinated by 4,146 teams, comprising 3,753 mobiles— 292 fixed and 101 transit teams.

The polio campaign will commence in certain parts of South Waziristan Agency on November 28.

Coordinator emergency operation centre for Fata stated that the drive will focus on vaccinating persistently missed children as vaccinating every child was the only way to eradicate polio.

In a statement issued from the Fata secretariat, the coordinator stated he was confident that with the support of political administration, law enforcement agencies, national and international partners, the anti-polio campaign will be able to achieve its set targets.

So far only two polio cases have been reported from South Waziristan Agency and frontier regions where both the cases were confirmed from within the displaced families who took shelter in Afghanistan.

Separately, the preparatory activities to vaccinate around 1.6 million children across 12 districts of Balochistan during the polio drive have been completed.

Coordinator for provincial Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) Balochistan, Syed Faisal Ahmed, said in a statement that all essential preparations were completed in time for the three-day anti-Polio drive.

The drive will be held in Dera Bugti, Qilla Saifullah, Qilla Abdullah, Naseerabad, Jaffarabad, Khuzdar, Pishin, Loralai, Quetta, Jhal Magsi, Zhob, Sherani and other high risk districts.

“A total of 6,050 vaccination teams will be deployed to administer anti-polio drops among children under the age of five,” Faisal said.  He further said that stringent security measures were taken to avoid any untoward action.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 23^rd, 2016.