Govt set to re-launch crippled anti-polio drive: Wazir Ali

Provinces asked to devise comprehensive plan for security of vaccinators.

ISLAMABAD:

A senior aide to the prime minister vowed on Thursday to relaunch the drive to eradicate polio from the country and use all necessary resources for the purpose, despite multiple attacks on vaccinators.

Shahnaz Wazir Ali, the special assistant to the prime minister on social sectors and focal person of the monitoring cell on polio, told The Express Tribune that “the vaccination campaign” was being organised “to compensate for children who have missed the vaccine.”

She insisted that the government would not brook any attempt by militant groups to sabotage the struggle against polio.

The campaign was temporarily suspended after a series of deadly attacks on anti-polio drive staffers in Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) provinces.

An anti-polio campaign official said that, the schedule for the campaign will be announced soon and that all the provinces have now been directed to chalk out a comprehensive plan for the security arrangements of staffers.

A steering committee of the government on polio vaccination in its meeting has also issued directions to the provincial governments to devise a strategy aimed at administering polio drops to the children who were deprived of the vaccination.



Following the meeting, the deputy commissioners of all cities were instructed through written orders to prepare a security plan to provide fool proof protection to the workers of polio vaccination campaign to avoid any untoward incident during the campaigns.

Wazir, who convened the meeting to address the concerns of various organisations on polio-campaign, directed the concerned authorities to undertake measures to ensure safety of polio immunisation drive staffers and access to the children.

Meanwhile, the representatives of major international agencies including World Health Organisation (WHO), The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) assured of their cooperation to provide financial and consultative aid for the anti-polio drive.

Over 3.4 million children not immunised

According to a report issued by Prime Minister Polio Monitoring Cell and Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), over 3.4 million children could not be immunised for polio across the country following the killing of polio workers in Sindh and K-P.

The report said that the government had set a target to vaccinate 4.5 million children in Sindh, however the drops were administered only to 2.7 million, depriving 1.8 million children of the vaccine.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 28^th, 2012.