Next goal: Vaccinators to zero in on missed children

Around 35.5 million will be targetted in a three-day campaign between March 16, 18.

ISLAMABAD: The next national polio immunisation drive will focus on the children missed for vaccination in high-risk areas.

For the third nationwide anti-polio drive this year, all provinces have completed the revised micro-planning of their specific high-risk union councils (UCs) to figure out the accurate number of children missed for vaccination.

In its report, Punjab found there were eight pockets in the high-risk UCs where children under the age of five were continuously missed out during the anti-polio drives, said Dr Rana Safdar, in-charge of the National Emergency Operation Cell (NEOC), while talking to The Express Tribune. However, he added, these eight areas have now been included in the list of places to be covered during the upcoming campaign, which will start next week.

He said the focus of national anti-polio drives has been shifted entirely from the children covered to the 0.36 million children missed who are a potential threat for spreading the crippling disease.

Most of these missed children, Safdar said, are living in the 551 high-risk UCs identified across the country and need to be vaccinated on urgent basis. “The NEOC is taking several initiatives to make sure every missed child is reached.”



Sharing the programme details, he said for the first time independent monitoring of the drive would be carried out in three phases: first to monitor the readiness of the anti-polio drive, second during the campaign and third after the end of the drive. The monitoring is likely start in the next two days.

“This will help address all the loopholes and challenges that usually occur before the start of the campaign and during it which mostly affect its quality,” Safdar said.

The national immunisation days planned between March 16 and March 18 aim at vaccinating a targeted population of 35.5 million children in 36 districts of Punjab, 25 districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), 22 districts and 18 towns of Sindh, 30 Balochistan districts, 10 districts in Azad Kashmir, seven districts in Gilgit-Baltistan, seven agencies and six frontier regions in Fata and two districts in the Islamabad capital territory.

Around 80,000 teams will go door to door to vaccinate children, while more than 9,000 teams will be deputed at fixed centres. Another 4,000 polio teams will cover transit points.

In a statement issued by the prime minister’s polio cell, Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq stressed vaccination for all children aged below five. Vitamin A supplements will also be given to all children aged between 6 months to 5 years, she added.

On March 10, two new polio cases were reported taking the year’s total to 18 with seven cases from K-P, six from tribal areas, three from Sindh and two from Balochistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 14^th, 2015.