ISLAMABAD: As many as 745 polio cases were reported in the year 2018, registering a significant decrease as compared to 2017, due to great efforts of the present government according to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Extended Programme for Immunisation (EPI) Director Dr Ikram Shah.
Talking to a private news channel, Dr Ikram said that solid measures have been taken to uproot this killing disease from society. “This year a single digit was reported in the overall polio cases with a 99 per cent reduction which is a good omen. Pakistan is now the closest it has ever been to its goal of polio eradication,” he added.
He explained that Pakistan is one of three remaining polio-endemic countries in the world, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, however, there has been a massive decline in polio cases in the country since the launch of Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Programme in 1994.
Despite the remarkable progress in 2018, 344 polio cases from Tribal areas, 117 from Balochistan, 52 from the Punjab, and 100 from the Sindh were reported.
He further urged the media to utilise their forum for creating awareness about the vaccination among the people so that they may save their children from the crippling disease.
The EPI director said that the credit for the reduction in polio cases went to the vaccination teams who had been striving to protect children from a lifetime of being a cripple.
He said that the federal and provincial governments are utilising all resources to eliminate the disease from the country and appreciated the media’s role in countering negative propaganda against polio immunisation campaigns.
“The present government is committed to ending polio and using all their resources to make it possible to provide a polio-free environment to the next generation,” he said.
“The virus will find refuge in children with low immunity. We need to ensure that all our children have received all of their routine immunisations and are vaccinated with two drops, every time the vaccine is offered,” he stressed.
“Parents who do not ensure vaccination of their children are risking health and lives of their own children as well as others around them. It is thus the responsibility of communities to help to identify and to vaccinate such children,” he urged.
“We are closest ever to the goal of polio eradication. But to achieve it, we must all come together as a nation to ensure that every child is vaccinated. This is the only way we can collectively ensure that we rid polio from our land,” he remarked.
Government support at every level and cooperation of communities and parents has been imperative in Pakistan’s recent successes actualising a case decline from last year.
Dr Ikram Shah urged the religious scholars to play their role to nullify the misconceptions about the polio vaccine.
