Poliovirus: Five new cases surface in a day

Number of polio cases in the country reaches 143

QUETTA/PESHAWAR:


The number of polio cases in the country reached 143 after five new polio cases surfaced across the country in a single day.


One of the new cases is an infant in a suburb of Quetta, making it first polio case in Quetta in 2014 and the second in Balochistan.


An official of the WHO confirmed that one-year-old Gul Muhammed, a resident of Eastern Bypass area, has contracted the virus, adding that he had been administered polio drops during the last seven campaigns in the area.

“It is a wild type-1 polio case. He received three POV doses through routine vaccination and more than seven doses through SIAs,” he said.

According to the K-P health department and the National Institute of Health in Islamabad, the first new polio victim in the tribal areas is the 24-month-old son of Jan Said, a resident of Khyber Agency’s Bara tehsil. The second child is 16-month-old Hamid, son of Mirtajudin Khan, a resident of North Waziristan Agency’s Mirali tehsil.

The two cases from K-P are 15-month-old Marwan from Bannu and 12-month-old Shukatullah from Tank. The disease has attacked at least 143 children in Pakistan during this year.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 11th, 2014.
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