A polio hero striving to inoculate every child

QUETTA:

Abid, a union council officer is on his way to Civil Hospital Quetta to collect the polio vaccine that is going to be used in the polio immunisation campaign across the largest province of the country.

He belongs to UC Hanna of district Quetta which is a far flung area that has been given a target of 3,200 children under the age of five to be administered with polio drops.

“During every campaign, I go to Civil Hospital Quetta’s cold room to collect the polio vaccine as per the defined target. It takes me almost an hour on motor bike to reach there. My priority is to maintain the cold chain of the vaccine which is a major challenge nowadays because of extreme hot weather”, said Abid. “Vaccines are then kept in the ILR of the Basic Health Unit in Hanna from where the polio frontline workers collect nowadays during campaign days and administer them to children”.

As the oral polio vaccine is heat sensitive, it is critically important to maintain the cold chain at all levels, right from the provincial cold room to the vaccination teams to ensure its efficacy. Therefore, vaccine carriers with ice packs or ice trucks are used during door to door anti-polio vaccination campaigns.

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As Balochistan is 44 per cent of the entire country, with the most scattered population, it is very challenging to provide life-saving vaccines especially for polio with a maintained cold chain to ensure its efficacy.

“It is the responsibility of the Balochistan governemnt and EPI programme to facilitate our community especially those living far away and have no health facility. We receive vaccines from Islamabad and store it in the cold rooms of the provincial EPI center. There are five mega cold rooms where not only polio but vaccines for other childhood diseases are also kept at a recommended temperature. These cold rooms have the capacity to store 2.5 million doses of polio vaccines, one million Covid vaccines and around 3.5 million doses for routine immunisation”, said Dr Ishaq Panezai, Provincial EPI Coordinator.

These vaccines are transported to the district health offices in special trucks built as per World Health Organisation recommended guidelines.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 21^st, 2021.