Hyd deputy commissioner takes notice of children excluded from drive

Around 2,368 children were reportedly not administered polio drops in the last drive.

HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Deputy Commissioner Muhammad Nawaz Soho expressed his dissatisfaction with the polio drive in the district as a large number of children were left out of the earlier polio immuniation drive.

At a meeting on Thursday to review preparations for the June 17 polio campaign, Soho also declared two union councils as ‘red zones’ for occurrence of polio cases.

According to the statistics shared at the meeting, six polio cases have surfaced in the district since 2008, with an average of at least one every year. In Sindh, the overall cases have decreased from 33 in 2011 to two reported in 2013 so far. One has been reported from Hyderabad and another from Dadu

The ADC Abid Saleem Qureshi told the meeting that around 2,368 children were not administered polio drops in the last drive in Hyderabad. In the UC-16 in Hyderabad City tehsil, 110 children have not been given even a single dose of polio prevention drops, he added. The last drive from April 15 to 18 had targeted 300,000 children.

He cited logistic problems, staff negligence and resistance of parents on religious grounds as the reasons. According to Qureshi, the district administration independently conducted the survey in the district.



Qureshi’s figures about the children excluded from the driver, however, were opposed by the District Health Officer Dr Ali Ahmed Talpur. He told The Express Tribune that the ADC’s report was not based on facts. “Only a few dozen children may have not been given the drops.”

Meanwhile, in the neighbouring Jamshoro district, 1,845 children were not administered the drops in the last campaign, Dr Abdul Ghaffar Shaikh told a separate meeting in Jamshoro. The provincial focal person, Dr Ahmed Ali Shaikh, strongly recommended that the DHOs declare parts of Hyderabad and Jamshoro districts where the migrant population is high as red zones.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 7^th, 2013.