Polio campaign: Drive hopes for 95% target rate

KARACHI: An oral polio vaccination (OPV) campaign in eight highly sensitive union councils of Karachi can achieve a 95 per cent target rate, said a report released on Tuesday. The teams can reach 215,913 out of 226,367 children targeted in the campaign from May 11 to May 18. This action is part of the campaign initiated by the Sindh chief minister last year to protect children under the age of five in 11 high-risk union councils (UCs). Coordination between the provincial health department, WHO, Unicef and the city administration resulted in three UCs being declared environmentally safe. Commissioner Shoaib Ahmad Siddiqui urged the workers to approach communities and ensure that unvaccinated children are administered with OPVs as soon as possible. He said the communities must be made to realise that polio prevention is a collective responsibility.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2015.