As many as 1.3 million children under five years of age will be administered Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) in the anti-polio drive in six districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), including Peshawar, from March 20, 2017.
KP Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) Coordinator Akbar Khan, while chairing a high-level meeting in this regard, informed that the upcoming campaign has been planned in Peshawar and in northern districts of Shangla, Mansehra, Abbottabad, Battagram and Kohistan as case response to Gilgit-Baltistan polio case.
Representatives of UNICEF, WHO, BMGF and EPI were in attendance on the occasion. He said that the campaign would be conducted in selected union councils (UCs) of Abbottabad, Mansehra and in the entire districts of Peshawar, Battagram, Kohistan and Shangla.
According to EOC data, 0.862 million children under five years of age will be vaccinated against polio in Peshawar, 83,108 children in Kohistan, 17,500 in Shangla, 90,666 in Battagram, 85,176 in Abbottabad, and 69,244 in Mansehra.
Akbar Khan said that stringent measures have been taken to provide security cover, adding that teams have been constituted of trained health workers, and they are deployed on fixed and transit points.
Moreover, he went on to add that eight-day inactivated polio campaign (IPV) has been planned in Kohat, Karak, Bannu and Tank districts of the province from March 22, 2017.
He informed that 191,438 children aged between 4 to 23 months will be given IPV shots, out of which 62,092 in Kohat, 42,822 in Karak, 28,108 in Tank, and 58,422 in Bannu have been targeted for the campaign.
To reach the target, 958 teams of trained health workers have been formed for the upcoming IPV campaign, while 1856 community mobilisers will be engaged in the drive.
