Sindh’s 2nd polio case this year surfaces in Larkana

Three-year-old girl diagnosed with crippling disease

LARKANA:  

A three-year-old girl in Larkana was diagnosed with polio on Tuesday, becoming the second victim of the crippling disease in Sindh this year and the 12th in the country.

"The child was vaccinated but she was low on immunity,” Sindh Emergency Operation Centre for Polio Coordinator Umar Farooq Bullo told The Express Tribune.

“This is why repeated vaccination is necessary. Further investigation is under way,” he added.

The other polio case in Sindh this year was reported in Karachi, where a three-year-old girl in Lyari Town tested positive for the disease.
The leading number of cases in 2019 has been reported in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) – seven, including three that surfaced in the tribal districts.

There have been three cases in Punjab, all of them in Lahore.
Earlier this year, traces of the poliovirus were found in the sewage water of the country’s major cities including Karachi, Peshawar, Bannu, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Qilla Abdullah, Pishin and Quetta.



Twelve cases were reported in the country last year, six in the tribal districts, three in Balochistan, two in K-P, and one in Sindh.
A few months ago, Pakistan’s race against polio was almost at the finish line, as officials believed the crippling virus was on the verge of eradication.

But the entire exercise suddenly suffered a major setback last month after a slew of violence affected campaigns against the poliovirus across the country.

A fresh wave of attacks erupted after a ludicrous propaganda campaign to try and frame the polio vaccine as being injurious for health.

Things ran smoothly until 10:30am on April 22, when several children allegedly felt unwell soon after been given the vaccine at a school on the outskirts of Peshawar. The children were rushed to Hayatabad Medical Complex and many to other health facilities, where they began blaming the vaccine.

Health officials, however, immediately disputed the claim.
But by 11am, the entire set-up was disrupted and polio workers started facing resistance. Over 34,000 children were brought to different hospitals in Peshawar as parents feared a reaction from the vaccine. All of the children, however, were sent back home and not a single casualty was reported.

Officials are calling the latest attacks on polio workers and security personnel deployed to protect vaccinators a ‘turning point’.