Final push against polio virus from July 10

High-risk areas to be targeted against crippling disease

ISLAMABAD: The government plans to start its final push against the polio virus with a special anti-polio drive to vaccinate 10 million children in areas at risk of the crippling disease.

“It is for the first time that Pakistan is launching special anti-polio drive in July and that too during the high transmission season in order to reduce the risk of its spread further,” National Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC) for Polio head Dr Rana Safdar told The Express Tribune.

He said the anti-polio drive would not be carried out throughout the country but only in areas where there is a high risk of its spread, adding the special anti-polio drive is scheduled to start in northern Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Fata from July 10 and in other provinces/areas including Rawalpindi and Islamabad from July 17.



While sharing details, Dr Safdar said he led a special delegation to the Quetta block, the key area of concern highlighted in The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) report, and had in-depth review separately with the provincial polio and EPI teams for Quetta, Pishin and Killa Abdullah.

“To effectively cover high risk mobile populations the mapping, social profiling and registration and child vaccination process is underway in all provinces, including the hotspots of Quetta block and Rawalpindi-Islamabad where the virus has been recently showing its presence in the environment,” said Dr Safdar.

He said the EOCs along with respective EPI programmes have also started an extensive social mobilisation and outreach sessions in core reservoirs of Peshawar and Karachi.



“Similar activities will be rolled out in Quetta block and Islamabad from July onwards,” he said.

Dr Safdar said a nationwide anti-polio drive will be carried out in September.

Meanwhile, outgoing World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Dr Margaret Chan has written a letter to Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq, Prime Minister's Focal Person on Polio Eradication in Pakistan, in which she has acknowledged the excellent collaboration between the WHO and the government of Pakistan.



In her letter, a copy of which is available with The Express Tribune, she wrote, “Pakistan has accomplished extraordinary progress with the polio eradication programme…Your commitment and leadership has been transformational and has led to the increase in quality of campaigns and surveillance activities which have been critical to the progress we are seeing today…”

Fresh NIH alerts

The National Institute of Health (NIH) on Friday issued fresh alerts to the federal and provincial health departments, suggesting them to take extra pre-emptive measures against communicable diseases.

According to the seasonal awareness alert letter (SAAL) issued by the NIH, all provincial and federal health departments as well as other stakeholders have been suggested to take pre-emptive measures against communicable diseases like CCHF, Chikungunya, dengue fever, gastroenteritis, malaria as well as the vaccine preventable diseases like measles, typhoid fever, viral hepatitis and poliomyelitis.

Along with this the NIH has also informed about the international public health events like Ebola Virus Diseases, Zika, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus (MERSCoV) and influenza-A (H7N9) virus.