3-day vaccination campaign in Fata set to begin

Campaign will start later in Bajaur agency

PESHAWAR: The government is launching a three-day polio vaccination campaign in the tribal areas and will be followed up by a catch-up campaign for missed children.

This was announced by officials on Sunday. The campaign will be supervised by the agency’s surgeons while security will be provided by political agents, commissioners and law enforcement forces.

While the campaign across the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) will begin simultaneously, the campaign will be delayed in the Bajaur Agency.

The campaign aims to vaccinate more than a million children who are below five-years-of-age. Moreover, it will target the mobile population within the tribal agency and those who keep moving across the border with Afghanistan.

Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) Coordinator Zubair Khan said that they were feeling good about the success of the campaign. “The Fata team has achieved substantial progress and are in a better position to eradicate polio,” Zubair said, adding that no polio case has emerged from the tribal areas since July 2016.

The only thing we need now is to remain on track towards stopping the transmission of polio and making sure that every last child receives anti-polio vaccine, he said.

The EOC coordinator added that one of the key tools in their war against polio was an understanding amongst parents and caregivers in Fata that “any child left unvaccinated is a risk to all of us, and that they have a role to play in the form of supporting health workers vaccinating their children.”

“Those people who are moving from one place to another must vaccinate their children on transit points. This is how we can help protect our children from polio disease,” he added. He advised Fata EOC team to ensure that each and every child is vaccinated, especially those amongst high-risk mobile populations who frequently travel to and from Fata and the frontier regions within the country and from across the border.

K-P Governor Engineer Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, 0while chairing a meeting for the Fata Task Force for Polio on Friday, had termed polio eradication as one of their top priorities.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2018.