Families living in suburbs: workers complain of difficulties in administration of OPV

A large number of families living in suburbs of Karachi were not aware about oral polio vaccine (OPV) and they refused to get drops of OPV administered to their children, and the 'Expanded Programme on Immunisation' (EPI) received many complaints in this regard.
Sources told Business Recorder on Saturday that people working in polio campaign teams told the head office that a large number of families in suburbs of Karachi are not aware about OPV and they had not shown interest to get OPV administered to their children.
Workers complained to the officials of EPI head office, saying: "It's very hard to convince such families because they directly refused to get OPV to their children."
Most slum areas including Orangi, Saddar, SITE, Gadap, Malir, Keamari and Baldia were very hard target regarding OPV, sources said.
Families residing in these areas are unaware about polio disease and they have no awareness about the benefits of polio drops, sources said.
EPI Sindh had completed its door-to-door three-day campaign from 19th to 21st September 2011, in various parts of Karachi with hard struggle of 6,000 field teams for Karachi.
About 2,332,269 children of up to five years age were administered polio drops, source said. The sub-national immunisation days (SNIDs) were only being observed in Karachi and not the rest of the province due to recent heavy rains.
Sources said that EPI has decided to start anti-polio campaign in remaining 22 districts of province from September 26.
About 2.5 million children would be administered OPV from September 26 to September 29 in all other high-risk areas of the province, they said.
Waheeda Salman, a lady worker of a polio vaccination team, told Business Recorder that her team visited Hijrat Colony and other areas where the team faced hard reaction of the people.
She said that people were of the view that polio drops were bad for health of the children.
She said that it was very hard to administer polio drops to children living in backward areas, situated in suburbs of the city.
Farman Hussain, supervisor of a polio vaccination team said that EPI included educated girls in every field team who can motivate the families in order to vaccinate polio drops to their children.
Sources said that there would be 12,000 teams of vaccinators in 22 districts of province, which would vaccinate children against the virus that continues to affect children.
It is pertinent to mention here that 17 confirmed cases of polio have been reported in the province during the current year including four from Karachi. These cases were reported from Orangi, Saddar, Site, Baldia and other areas of the city.
The cases were reported from Thatta, Badin, Sanghar, Tando Mohammad Khan, Umerkot, Jamshoro and TandoAllahyar. These districts have been badly affected by rains. So far, 77 cases of polio have been reported from entire Pakistan in comparison to one case from India, 18 from Afghanistan, 26 from Nigeria.