Seize the disease: Special polio drive starts tomorrow

No decision has been made on the regular campaign, say health officials.

KARACHI:

The government plans to start a special two-day round of polio vaccination in Bin Qasim town on February 6, the area where the city’s first polio case in the last 14 months was detected.

The move comes amid the government’s reluctance to start the polio vaccination drive in Karachi over security concerns. When contacted, health and administration officials told The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity that no decision has been reached as yet on when the regular campaign will resume.

They added that special campaign will meet the World Health Organisation’s standard procedure, according to which a vaccination drive must be conducted in the area within three kilometres of the spot where the polio case was detected. The special campaign will take only two days to complete and will be circumscribed to this area.

The government had to postpone the polio eradication campaign - which was expected to start during the first week of this month - because of the poor law and order condition. What made it even more hesitant to resume the drive was the unavailability of police and Rangers to guard the volunteers. The door-to-door campaign came to an abrupt and unexpected halt after five female health workers were shot in December in Peshawar and Karachi, raising fears about the safety of the volunteers. The last round of the polio eradication programme targeted over four million children in Sindh, most of whom live in Karachi and other urban centres.



The federal and provincial governments, and district administrations prepared a strategy after surveys. They decided that vaccination rounds should be done exclusively in some areas instead of covering the entire city together.

According to government data, a total of 34 cases were reported in Pakistan last year, four of which were from Sindh. Karachi had no polio case in 2012.  Before the current case in Bin Qasim Town, the last case in the city was reported in November 2011 when 16-month-old Kaimat from Baldia Town was confirmed as having the virus.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 5^th, 2013.