Over 500,000 children have been vaccinated during the three days of an anti-polio campaign in the city that started on Monday.
Of these, 445,893 were given anti-polio drops on Wednesday, 70,908 on Tuesday and 24,600 on the first day, according to Health Department superintendent Muhammad Iftikhar.
He said the campaign started at a slow pace with relatively more vials used on the first day (a vial can be used to administer drops to up to 20 children) than the second and third day, he said.
Iftikhar said the slow start was expected because the teams needed some time to get accustomed to the areas assigned to them.
Mohsin Qureshi, in charge of the Gulberg Zone, said the campaign was thoroughly planned. He said the area in-charge had strict orders to carry out field checks to ensure that no neighbourhood was skipped.
He said all teams were required to visit the areas assigned to them before setting up a camp. This, he said, was done to enable them to set targets beforehand.
Qureshi said the city government’s request to set up camps at some private schools was turned down by the school administrations. “They said they could not allow it without consultation with parents of their students,” he said.
“Some people were reluctant to let the teams vaccinate their children, he said, “but it was a very small number.”
He said most people in Lahore now realised that anti-polio drops were beneficial for their children. However, he said some still feared that these drops were an American ploy to harm Muslims.
Atif Saleem, a vaccinator at Children’s Hospital, said he expected to administer anti-polio drops to 4,000 to 5,000 children on Thursday.
Besides the six public hospitals, he said, health department teams were undertaking the vaccination drive at several public places including bus stands.
District officer (Health) Dr Tariq Ramazan said that the district coordination officer (DCO) had been very strict this year about meeting targets.
He said the DCO had directed all town municipal officers (TMOs) to regularly monitor the progress of the campaign.
This year’s campaign comes in the wake of a World Health Organisation warning of possible sanctions on travel to Pakistan if it did not take quickly eradicate the disease. At least 144 new polio cases were reported in the country in 2010.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 10th, 2011.
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