Polio teams visit homes of missed kids

LAHORE:

Punjab wrapped up its third and last national polio immunisation drive of the year. Polio teams vaccinated thousands of last remaining children on the final day of the campaign to block off any possibility of poliovirus circulation in the province.

The campaign had concluded on Friday in 33 districts of Punjab, except Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad where it was completed on Sunday. Over 200,000 teams visited houses marked as having children 'not-available' earlier. In a statement, Punjab Emergency Operations Centre Coordinator Adeel Tasawar said the commitment shown by the leadership of the province, including Primary and secondary Healthcare Secretary Nadia Squib, by holding campaign reviews every day, showed that polio eradication was the top priority of the government.

He sounded alarm that Punjab's children were at the risk of imported virus circulation, which could not be allowed at any cost. He underlined that genomic sequencing results indicated that the virus was linked to Afghanistan and other endemic zones. He said the authorities were planning to stop the virus transmission by June and reach zero polio by end-2025.

Preliminary statistics showed that over 23 million children had been vaccinated till the sixth day of the campaign. Lahore topped the list of most vaccinated children with over 2.2 million vaccinated. The district was followed by Faisalabad with 1.5 million and Rahim Yar Khan with over 1.1 million vaccinations.

The national campaign was launched all over Punjab on October 28, targeting 23.3 million children.