Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah while expressed concern over an increasing number of polio cases in the metropolis and ordered to establish a separate police force to guard polio vaccinators in the high risk areas.
Headed by an SPP rank officer, the new force would have 700 personnel to ensure fool-proof security to the polio team during the four month of low transmission period of polio virus started from current month.
He directed the Sindh IG to arrange 50 per cent personnel of this force each from Karachi and interior Sindh with sophisticated weapons and vehicles. The chief minister directed the secretary health and commissioner to launch crash programmes for anti-polio campaign in 11 most-affected union councils of Karachi after Aashura and also include Pashtoon females in the polio teams to make it more successful.
He decided this while presiding over a meeting to review the anti-polio campaign in the province held here at CM House Saturday.
Addressing the meeting, the chief minister said that despite their efforts to eliminate the menace of polio, as many as 23 polio cases, 21 from Karachi and one each from Dadu and Sanghar, has been reported.
He said out of these 23 polio cases, 21 cases pertain to Pashto-speaking families. “Actually, the polio cases are being injected into the Sindh province through migration of unvaccinated pashtoon IDPs from FATA but the Sindh government is getting bad name for none of its fault.”
He said that experts and organisations working against the polio menace were also of the view that FATA had become a home of polio virus and it was being carried to the rest of the country.
