Twin cities declared high-risk for anti-polio drive

First nationwide door-to-door drive starts Monday

ISLAMABAD: The twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi have been declared high risk areas for the anti-polio drive starting from Monday, due to detection of polio virus in the samples of sewage.

Pakistan will start its final push towards polio interruption with the first nationwide door-to-door polio campaign of 2017-18 low transmission season from September 18 to 22 in all districts and tribal agencies of the country.



Minor rescheduling has been done in newly de-notified areas of the tribal agencies of Khyber, North Waziristan and South Waziristan and select UCs in tehsil Rojhan, Rajanpur. In Quetta the drive will last from September 17-23, in Lahore from September 19-23 and in Karachi from September 16-22.

Low transmission season will last from September to May. Karachi block, Quetta block, and twin cities are high risk areas due to reports of poliovirus detection in sewage of these mega cities.

The programme will target a total of 37.74 million under five children. The break includes 18.76 million children in Punjab, 8.6 million in Sindh, 5.6 million in K-P, 2.4 million in Balochistan, 1.034 million in Fata, 0.74 million in AJK, 0.234 million in G-B and 0.312 million children in Islamabad by utilising around 42 million doses of oral polio vaccine (OPV). In the core reservoir areas covered through Community Based Vaccination (CBV) approach, it will be a five-day campaign and two-day catch-up, while in the mobile team areas, there will be a three-day campaign and two-day catch-up.



A total of 250,000 personnel will strive to achieve the set targets across Pakistan including 23,250 area in-charges, 7,896 UC medical officers, 182,787 mobile, 10,122 fixed and 11,220 transit team members.

The current polio epidemiology in the country is best ever observed. Cases have declined from 306 in 2014 to 54 in 2015 and only 20 in 2016. Momentum is maintained in 2017 where the current case count of 4 compares to 16 same point in time during 2016.

The National Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) has urged entire team to strive hard for best ever nationwide campaign setting the foundation of wiping out the virus from the last remaining areas. The National Task Force under Prime Minister as well as the national and provincial political and religious leadership has also requested all sectors especially the parents to fully facilitate vaccinaters in this noble cause.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 17^th, 2017.