‘Pakistan winning war against disease’

Polio management team deliberates ‘final push’

ISLAMABAD: Having achieved the lowest ever case count of 8 in 2017, Pakistan is on right trajectory to finish the job in 2018 by maintaining intense pressure of the crippling polio virus.

This was concluded by the National Polio Management Team (NPMT) which met in Islamabad Tuesday to review the progress on National Emergency Action Plan (NEAP) and chalk out strategic direction for the low transmission season 2018-19.

The NPMT consists of entire programme leadership including coordinators, national and provincial leads of WHO, UNICEF, NSTOP, Technical Advisors and Focal Persons. It has all the skill mix to critically review every component of the programme and take consensus decisions to overcome issues. Its decisions are valued and supported by respective Governments as well as international partners.



The Prime Minister’s Focal Person for Polio Eradication, Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq, thanked entire Polio Eradication team for the sustained hard work and commitment. “Your involvement with your teams has been critical in achieving our success, to date - your strong leadership and drive for results is clearly showing us how collective efforts do make a difference for all the children of Pakistan.”

While an overall 97 per cent decline in number of cases from highs of 306 in 2014 to only eight in 2017 is encouraging, we are striving for a magical number ‘Zero’, stated Dr Rana Safdar, National Coordinator for Polio eradication. “The immunity wall generated by the programme is not letting the virus to paralyze our children as evident from the fact that no polio case has so far been reported in 2018”. Nevertheless, despite decreased intensity of transmission, the virus continues to be challenging by appearing in environmental samples from core reservoirs of Karachi, Quetta Block and Peshawar. Intense transmission across the shared corridors with Afghanistan further leaves no space for us to relax till the job is fully done, Safdar said.



The NPMT further had thorough deliberations on ways to mitigate the potential risks area by area. The team observed that with interruption is in sight, the programme needs support from all segments of the society to convey the right messages to communities that still fall prey to negative propaganda against vaccination – sadly five out of eight children paralyzed by poliovirus in 2017 came from families refusing vaccination due to misconceptions. It was shared that polio vaccine remains the safest human vaccine available and over 10 billion doses administered across the globe have not resulted in even a single case
of adverse reaction anywhere in the world.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 21^st, 2018.