7 more cases set off alarm bells

In a letter to four CMs, PM calls for redoubling efforts to eradicate the virus .

PESHAWAR/ ISLAMABAD:

As seven fresh polio cases surfaced in the country on Tuesday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has asked the provincial governments to redouble their eradication efforts and work in close coordination with the federal establishments associated with the implementation of the National Emergency Action Plan. 

In a letter addressed to all four provincial chief ministers, the prime minister drew their attention towards the endemic eruption of poliovirus in Pakistan. He urged them to immediately map out and identify high risk areas in their provinces and adopt specific interventions for each of them depending on their particular requirements.

He said the provincial chief executives should instruct their district administrations to ensure vigilant oversight of vaccination campaigns during the upcoming low transmission season (December 2014 to May 2015).

In the letter, the prime minister said polio has been declared a public health emergency and the National Emergency Action Plan (NEAP) has been launched for its eradication.

Quite recently, he said, the Independent Monitoring Board for Global Polio Eradication also declared polio as an international emergency. The Emergency Committee of the International Health Regulation has also recommended that polio vaccines be administered to every international passenger travelling out of Pakistan, he added.



The prime minister said the international community’s concern on the rapid spread of polio in Pakistan was also raised by the World Bank president in their meeting in New York in September. It has been predicted that if the spread of polio is not contained, the number of cases in the country might increase tenfold over the coming years.

The prime minister said the situation was indeed alarming, rendering it difficult to over-emphasise the need to strengthen the oversight and accountability mechanisms within the NEAP which, inter alia, focuses on ensuring access to target populations in security-compromised regions; controlling further outbreaks in reservoir areas; and maintaining the polio-free status of the rest of the provinces.

The prime minister’s letter came on a day when seven more polio cases were reported from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), taking the number of cases reported so far this year to 227.

Two cases were confirmed in Khyber Agency’s remote Tirah Valley and Peshawar’s Sheikh Muhammadi union council. Both infants – a girl and a boy – were 10-month old. Similarly, the National Institute of Health (NIH) confirmed another five cases, three of them from Khyber Agency and one each from Frontier Region Bannu and Charsadda district. None of these children had ever been vaccinated.


Published in The Express Tribune, October 29^th, 2014.