Polio campaign: Health workers fail to reach high-risk areas

The three-day campaign is underway and will be completed today.


Sameer Mandhro October 01, 2014

KARACHI:


Even though polio cases have hit an all time high - 184 in the country and 17 in Sindh, out of which 16 are in Karachi - children in three of the high-risk districts in the city were not vaccinated during the three-day National Immunisation Day campaign. 


"The polio workers did not have security," said the special secretary of the health department, Dr Khalid Shaikh, while talking to the media at a press conference on Tuesday. "The three-day drive against the crippling disease in district East, Malir and Korangi will start when adequate security is provided to the polio workers." He added that due to the security issue, they had to divide the polio campaign into two parts.

Dr Shaikh claimed that inadequate security was one of the reasons the polio campaign scheduled for Sunday in high-risk areas had failed. The press conference was attended by EPI's provincial director Dr Mazhar Khamisani, Senior Director Health Services Dr Zafar Ejaz.

Two drops at a time

The NID campaign which started on Monday is underway in district West, South and Central and will be completed today (Wednesday). Officials said that Lyari was the only area where polio teams did not need any security.

Sixteen is the highest number of polio cases reported from Karachi in the last 10 years. Around eight of these cases were reported from Gadap Town. Water samples taken from the area came back testing positive of the virus's presence. Dr Shaikh said that out of the 16 cases, 14 of them were from Pakhtoon families.

According to officials, 47 of the city's Union Councils (UCs) were declared high-risk areas. They said that children from eight of the UCs, including Gadap, SITE, Baldia and Landhi, would be given the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) instead of Oral Polio Vaccine after Eidul Azha.

The provincial government has already set up 215 permanent transit check posts across the province, including 107 in Karachi. These posts are set up at hospitals, bus stops, railway stations, the airport and all entry points of the province and city. According to Dr Khamisani, it was difficult to administer drop to children in some area as sometimes their teams could only do it when the Rangers were present.

Polio in Karachi

There are a total of 7.9 million children under the age of five in Sindh - this means 2.41 million of them are present in Karachi. For the three-day NID drive the health officials had constituted 6,238 polio teams for all six districts of the city.

The special secretary claimed that they do not arrange for the teams' security, they just share the number of how many people they will send and the police has to sort out the rest.

Karachi Police Chief AIG Ghulam Qadir Thebo said that the polio drive was going on and they were providing the workers with security. He added that they could not afford to fulfil their security needs in the way they want as we are facing a shortage of men on the police force.

New strategies

Dr Shaikh disclosed that the provincial government had requested the World Health Organisation (WHO) to provide female polio workers. "We will have 700 Pakhtoon female polio workers for the campaigns in high-risk areas," he said, adding it will help to make the routine immunisation drives more effective.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 1st, 2014.

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