Three-day anti-polio campaign in FATA from today

K-P governor wants to focus on migrating children

PESHAWAR: A three-day anti-polio campaign is set to kick off in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) from July 10 (today).

The areas which will be covered during the campaign include Khyber Agency, South Waziristan, Frontier Region Dera Ismail Khan and Frontier Region Tank.

The drive aims to vaccinate around 339,214 children below the age of five years. As many as 1,469 teams have been constituted, including 1,374 mobile teams, 62 fixed teams and 33 transit teams to administer the vaccine, said a press release issued on Sunday.

“Children travelling with their families should be focused on during the July round of the anti-polio campaign as repatriation of internally displaced people to their homes in Fata is in the process,” said Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Governor Engineer Iqbal Zafar Jhagra.

He directed children crossing into Pakistan from Afghanistan through the Ghulam Khan check post should also be vaccinated.

Meanwhile, EOC Coordinator Dr Fida Wazir pointed out that no polio cases had been reported in Fata for the past 11 months.

“It gives us an advantage over polio virus to interrupt its transmission,” Dr Wazir said.

He advised EOC Fata team that not a single migrating child should be missed in high-risk areas of the tribal areas since these areas are crucial for polio eradication.

So far in 2017, no polio case has been reported from the tribal areas so far while last year only two polio cases were reported from South Waziristan Agency.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 10^th, 2017.