The Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) for Polio in Sindh will kick off a week-long polio vaccination drive from today (Monday), in observance of the National Immunisation Days.
Aimed at administering polio drops to approximately nine million children under five years of age across 29 districts of Sindh, the drive will continue till December 6. Of its target, over two million children are to be vaccinated in Karachi.
According to the EOC, the campaign is to be conducted in line World Health Organisation-recommended Covid-19 prevention protocols. These include ensuring that polio workers wear masks, their temperatures are checked before deployment, they do not handle children directly, they don't enter the house of any vaccine recipients, spend limited time with vaccine recipients' families and use pens, rulers or elbows to knock at doors instead of their hands.
Polio vaccination drives and routine immunisation had come to a halt in Sindh from March to July, following the Covid-19 outbreak. "This created an immunity gap among children and we have been addressing it through back-to-back campaigns since August," explained the EOC spokesperson in Sindh. "If we continue [vaccination drives] at the same momentum, we will soon see significant results."
He also stressed the need for immunising children against other diseases they were prone to. "Children can be saved from childhood diseases like polio through vaccination and we need the media's help to raise awareness on the issue."
Pakistan is one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with Afghanistan and has so far reported 81 polio cases in 2020, out of which 22 emerged in Sindh.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 30th, 2020.
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