A three-day anti-polio campaign kicks off in Sindh, FATA, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit Baltistan and six districts of Punjab on Monday (today).
The campaign will continue from January 16 to January 19, followed by the vaccination of children missed during the three-day campaign, under the supervision and security of political agents, commissioners and security forces.
More than a million children below the age of 5 years in FATA will be vaccinated by 4,125 teams, with 3,668 mobile teams, 326 fixed teams, and 131 transit teams. The campaign will focus on reaching and vaccinating every child for complete polio eradication.
In a recently held FATA Task Force meeting at the Governor House, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Iqbal Zafar Jhagra said, “FATA is almost polio free and by ensuring high-quality campaigns that reach out to every child across the agencies, we can make polio eradication a reality.”
At the close of the meeting, the governor also awarded a cheque of Rs 500,000 to the EOC FATA Team pledged earlier for their exceptional performance in reducing the number of polio cases during 2016.
Focal Person for Polio and Senator Aysha Raza Farooq also attended the meeting and reminded the participants of the targets set for 2017. “We are very close to our goal but this should not slow us down, but rather encourage us to carry out three more high-quality campaigns in the new year and defeat the virus completely by March 2017,” she said.
“We will also have to ensure that we sustain zero polio cases for the next three years,” Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq added.
