District authorities to manage polio campaign from now

Health ministry given strict orders to keep campaign details hidden.

KARACHI: The planning and schedule of the polio campaign has been handed over to the district administration given the law and order situation in the city.

The federal and provincial governments have asked the district administrators to coordinate with the law enforcement agencies and plan the campaign at their own discretion.

“Each district is on its own now to decide the timeframe, and the security strategy,” said a ministry of health official, on the condition of anonymity. “They can even break the campaign across several neighbourhoods.”

The ministry of health has been given strict orders to not reveal the details of the polio eradication campaign to the media. So far, the campaign has been completed in district Central. It began in district South last week and is expected to be completed in two phases by the end of this month. The administration has, so far, ensured that Rangers and police personnel accompany all the health workers.

The current campaign is part of the door-to-door campaign that was stopped after five female health workers were shot last month in seemingly coordinated attacks at the start of a nationwide polio vaccination drive. The last round of the polio eradication programme for year the 2012 targeted 4.4 million children in Sindh’s 22 districts. A majority of these children were in Karachi and other urban centres.

Last week, Shahnaz Wazir Ali, who is the adviser to the prime minister on the social sector and the polio eradication campaign, said that Pakistan will continue to eradicate polio with a better strategy and with higher security for the teams.



Pakistan is one of three countries still at risk of the polio virus. According to government data, there has been a decline in polio cases where vaccination took place regularly. Sindh and the Punjab have the lowest rates of polio cases, despite having a higher population, while Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and FATA have the highest rates. In the past 13 months, a total of 34 cases were reported in Pakistan, and four of them were from rural Sindh.

Campaign in Hyderabad

A three-day polio eradication campaign will be carried out in Hyderabad from January 28 to January 30, said Hyderabad Deputy Commissioner Agha Shahnawaz Babar. He advised the health officers to get in touch with the transporters’ association so that they can administer polio drops to children in school buses. He was speaking at a meeting of the district polio eradication committee on Thursday at old district nazim’s secretariat.

Babar also requested the police extend all support to the vaccinators’ teams, especially at bus terminals because children coming to Hyderabad from other districts may bring in the virus. The district health officers should also pay full attention to the transit points of the districts, he added. Babar was told that a total of 298,947 children of under five years old will be vaccinated through 717 mobile vaccination teams, as well as, 90 fixed and 37 transit points of the district.

Additional input from APP

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18^th, 2013.