Campaign extended in Rawalpindi for a day: Punjab wraps anti-polio drive in 35 districts up

LAHORE: Punjab wrapped up its second national immunization polio eradication campaign of the year on Sunday in 35 districts, confirmed the Punjab Emergency Operations Centre in a statement.

However, the campaign has been extended in Rawalpindi for one day due to extensive rains, which hampered the work of polio teams as they were unable to complete their coverage targets.

The district had set up a target of vaccinating 1.05 million children in the seven-day campaign. However, the rain shower continued to lash the city with regular intervals forcing the authorities to extend polio campaign for one day till Monday.

In the campaign so far, 22.8 million children have been vaccinated in the province. Lahore topped the list of most vaccinated children with over million vaccinations till Saturday. So far, 1.6 million guest children have also been vaccinated.

On Sunday, the Coordinator of the Emergency Operations Centre and head of the polio eradication programme in Punjab Khizer Afzaal directed the district health officials to compile final statistics at the earliest so that the process of polio campaign’s quality assurance could be started.

The polio programme head heaped praises on polio workers saying the workers of the programme performed their duties very diligently during the campaign. Terming the polio workers programme assets, Afzaal said the frontline workers were going extra mile in populated and hard to reach areas with a singular goal to vaccinate children and eradicate polio from Pakistan.

The second National Immunization Days (NIDs) of 2024 commenced on February 26 (Monday) all over the province.

In mega districts including Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad, the campaign was scheduled to continue for seven days. While in other districts the campaign lasted five days.

Over 200,000 polio workers and supervisors participated in the drive to immunize 23.30 million children under the age of five against polio. This includes: 16605 area in-charges, 3991 union council medical officers, over 84884 mobile polio team members, 4884 fixed team members and over 2664 transit team members. Punjab Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) had deployed experts from all areas to facilitate implementation of the polio campaign in priority areas.

Although Punjab is polio free since October 2020, movement of population between core reservoirs and Punjab is one the major causes of virus importation in Punjab. Therefore, Punjab is taking concrete steps to improve coverage of high-risk mobile population at transit points. Multiple doses of polio drops offer the best protection against polio virus and every single child needs to be vaccinated in order achieve population immunity and prevent virus circulation if we are to eradicate polio from infected zones.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024