ISLAMABAD: The National Immunisation Campaign (NIC) had found five positive environmental samples of polio in 2017, causing worries among the authorities concerned as they had already been struggling to deal with the menace. Following the report, however, hectic campaigns were launched in Islamabad last year, resulting in negative test reports of environmental samples conducted in January 2018.
The polio campaigns are being led by Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Additional Deputy Commissioner (East) Captain (retd) Jawad Muzaffar and supervised and technically supported by ICT district health officer, Capital Development Authority (CDA) health services director general (DG), NSTOP and WHO staff.
During the campaigns, all the 50 union councils, including urban and rural areas of the federal capital, were focused in which polio vaccines were administered to 312,038 children below the age of five years.
The Islamabad Polio Control Room (IPCR) has been established in the ICT administration block to monitor day-to-day steps taken by the federal government and Islamabad administration in collaboration with the CDA to eliminate the menace of polio from the twin cities.
According to the official data obtained by Pakistan Today, it emerged on Sunday that polio samples were positive in February, March, April, May and July last year, which was an alarming situation then. However, the ICT administration along with CDA, WHO, and UNICEF, on a war-footing basis, overcame this issue of supreme importance.
It is to be noted that the IPCR conducted tests of water samples taken from the Lui-Nalla site near Sabzi Mandi point every month.
According to details, the federal government is following four steps to fight polio cases. First is the routine immunisation by administering five injections to every newborn baby. This did not yield results as only 50 per cent babies were protected from five deceases including DTaP, Hib, hepatitis B, polio, and PCV13.
In the second step, supplementary immunisation is given to the children at their door-steps through various government funded campaigns.
The third step is surveillance to check if the polio vaccination is working or not, and for that environmental samples were taken from 53 different sites across the country. In Islamabad, environmental samples were taken from the site containing the most amount of human waste, which was from Lui-Nalla.
In the fourth step, special teams do mop-up campaigns and revisit and vaccinate those areas in which the polio samples were found positive or cases were detected to ensure the eradication of polio from the capital.
