Punjab marks 3rd polio-free year
PHOTO: FILE
Punjab marked the World Polio Day on Tuesday amidst a realisation that the threat from the virus persists despite the province having been free of the disease for the past three years.
Detection of the virus in environmental genomic sampling from Lahore and Rawalpindi districts during the ongoing year highlighted the risk.
Seminars, exhibitions, walks and other events were organised at medical colleges and hospitals to highlight the risks of polio. The Punjab Emergency Operations Centre gave appreciation certificates to polio workers.
A number of polio vaccination campaigns were launched this year after existence of poliovirus was confirmed in Lahore and Rawalpindi.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are among the countries where the virus still exists.
A large exhibition of photographs to mark the World Polio Day was organised at Alhamra Arts Council.
People from different walks of life visited the exhibition.
“We are celebrating the day with a promise that poliovirus will be eradicated from Punjab,” Caretaker Provincial Primary and Secondary Healthcare Minister Dr Jamal Nasir said while inaugurating the exhibition.
He said the detection of poliovirus in the province had shown that the surveillance system was functioning well.
He said polio workers were at the font line as heroes in the battle to free the province of the disease.
He said polio teams were struggling for a healthy future of the children so they should be appreciated and every citizen should help them.
He said all people should work for the success of the vaccination campaigns the parents should give polio drops to their kids during every campaign.
He said the parents should remember that there was no treatment of polio, and Pakistan and Afghanistan were still in its grip.
Read: PM vows to resist anti-vaxxers for polio-free Pakistan
He appealed to the people to cooperate with the polio teams and Punjab government to eradicate the virus. He head of the polio eradication programme in Punjab, Khizer Afzaal, highlighted in a statement that
Punjab had been free of polio cases since October 2020, terming it “an achievement of the programme”. However, he cautioned that, as evident from the genomic sampling of the virus in Lahore and Rawalpindi’s environmental samples, Punjab was at the risk of virus importation.
“Punjab is free of polio cases for the last three years, but as long as polio exists anywhere else, it is a threat to children everywhere,” he underlined.
“To end polio, we must reach every child in this challenging last mile of eradication which is within our grasp,” he said.
The EOC head said the effort would bring about the eradication of the second human disease in history.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 25th, 2023.