Scope of anti-polio campaign expanded

National Immunisation Days to cover whole Punjab

LAHORE:

Punjab Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) Coordinator Khizer Afzaal has disclosed that a sub-national polio vaccination campaign set to begin by the end of the ongoing month has been converted into National Immunisation Days (NIDs) that will cover the whole Punjab.

Presiding over a meeting on Tuesday, he said the campaign’s scope had been expanded in view of ongoing virus circulation.  He confirmed that although no child has been affected by the virus, its circulation was expanding, which put the children at risk.

He said the virus had been detected in environmental samples from new districts.

Afzaal called for higher focus on South Punjab and northern Sindh, stressing that the coming campaign would be critical for breaking poliovirus circulation and saving children from the paralysing disease.

The provincial EOC head expressed his concern about a higher risk of polio among migrant and other priority communities. He appealed to the parents to get their children vaccinated by polio workers deployed at transit points. He clarified that although positive environmental samples could not be ruled out in an endemic country like Pakistan, the challenge faced by the programme was prevention of local transmission, which could happen if the campaigns’ quality was below par. Statistics gathered from the polio eradication campaigns will be presented to the provincial authorities.

Afzaal instructed the district teams to ensure credibility of the data on micro-plans, missed children’s coverage and vaccines. He issued directions to enter all data about ‘zero dose’ children after routine immunisation in an application within a week.

Punjab had wrapped up its first national immunisation drive of the year on Sunday, achieving a coverage of 96 per cent. More than 23.13 million children were vaccinated in the province in the November-December NIDs, while 23.38 million children were vaccinated in the January NIDs.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th 2024.