A delegation of Japanese parliamentarians, currently on a visit to Pakistan, met with top officials, experts and representatives of international donor agencies on Wednesday to review the country’s polio eradication efforts. Japan is the largest donor of the polio vaccine used to vaccinate over 33 million children every four to six weeks in Pakistan. The delegation led by Hirobumi Niki, a member of House of Representatives and executive of Polio Eradication Parliamentary League, also included Masamitsu Naito, the president of Japan Institute for Global Health and former senior vice minister for internal affairs and communications. Babar Yaqoob Fateh Mohammed, an additional secretary at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, welcomed the delegation and expressed profound gratitude on behalf of the people of Pakistan for the sustained support of the Japan, which is helping save millions of Pakistanis from the horrors of a crippling disease.
He informed the delegation that under the National Emergency Action Plan, there was a highest level of commitment with Premier Yousaf Raza Gilani leading the National Task force on Polio and monitoring the nationwide campaign through a cell established at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat. Dr Altaf Bosan, the national coordinator of the Prime Minister’s Polio Monitoring Cell, gave a detailed briefing on the progress made through the initiative. He said 89 cases had so far been reported in the country during the current year, with Balochistan having the largest number of patients followed by FATA, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. With strenuous efforts being made at the provincial and district levels to improve the management of campaigns in Balochistan and close collaboration with the army in FATA, more and more children were being reached during the each campaign, he added.
