Polio drive starts across Sindh

HYDERABAD/KARACHI:

The polio immunisation drive kicked off across the province on Monday. The seven-day vaccination campaign will continue till September 15.

In Karachi, the authorities plan to inoculate 2.7 million children of up to five years of age.

The health authorities in Hyderabad have kick-started a seven-day polio immunisation campaign after a 29 months old child was detected positive with 'the resident' polio virus on August 23.

The district health officer Lala Jaffar Khan informed on Monday that 401,000 children will be inoculated against the virus during the drive. According to him, 1,565 mobile teams are taking part in the exercise in addition to,160 fixed and 70 transit points. The DHO recalled that so far 17 environmental samples taken from the city's drain have turned out to be positive in the last eight months.

The anti-polio campaign was officially launched in the Mirpurkhas division, targeting the vaccination of 5,47,853 children across 63 union councils in the districts of Mirpurkhas, Umarkot and Tharparkar. .

In Larkana, the teams have planned to visit remote and far-flung areas as well as rain and flood-affected areas of the five districts to administer Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) to the 1,179,995 children with the help of 3,430 mobile and fixed teams.

In Shaheed Benazirabad Division 1192 teams have been formed to administer polio drops to more than 420,000 children.