PESHAWAR – A three-day immunisation campaign against polio is scheduled to start in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and the tribal areas (FATA) on March 7 with an aim to make the society free polio.
More than 4.9 million children in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 1.071 million in FATA would be vaccinated during the drive, KP Health Minister Sayed Zahir Ali Shah said while addressing a one-day workshop organised by the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) in collaboration with the UNICEF and WHO. “In Pakistan, 14 per cent of the deaths in the children of less than five years of age are caused by pneumonia and nine per cent by diarrhoea, but these diseases are preventable.
Poliomyelitis is the only childhood disease that can only be totally wiped out through immunisation,” he said. Pakistan became the world top polio-endemic country in 2010 with 142 cases and was now the cause of polio transmission for the entire world, he said, adding that 2011 had been declared as the year of a polio-free Pakistan for which socially acceptable strategy had been developed. Muhammad Rahim Haqqani of the National Research and Development Foundation said they had covered 3480 chronic refusals cases and had obtained the support of 1870 clerics, who delivered sermons and visited the houses to convince the parents to administer drop to their children.
Deputy Director EPI Dr Jan Baz Afridi cited shortage of transport and other logistic facilities in some areas, which are hampering the efforts. He said nine out of the 11 cases recorded so far in the country during the current year had been reported from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA. UNICEF’s representative Dr Abdul Jamil mentioned that there was no dearth of resources in the country to counter the challenge while Dr Khalid Nawaz of the WHO brushed aside the impression that immunisation caused impotency and infertility among the recipients.
Since, the launch of the polio eradication initiative, about 5million children had been saved from being crippled through vaccination, he added. It is worth mentioning that the state run news agency APP had reported the other day that religious scholars from different schools of thought in a joint statement rejected the perception that Islam prohibited administering polio drops to children. The statement was made in a big congregation at Union Council Usman Khel.
