A second child has contracted polio in a tribal region near the Afghan border after the Taliban banned vaccinations there nearly a year ago, a UN official said Thursday. The first polio case was detected in the North Waziristan region, also known as the strong bastion of Taliban and al Qaeda linked militants, earlier this month, with officials expecting a "bigger outbreak" of the disease.
"This is the second child, a 36-month-old boy getting paralysed after contracting polio," the World Health Organisation's senior co-ordinator for polio eradication in Pakistan, Elias Durry, told AFP. "The problem is that it is just a tips of the iceberg," Durry said, adding, "this is what will happen if we have children without polio vaccination".
He said: "We fear there will be more cases in North Waziristan, its neighbourhood and other tribal regions and north-western districts if the vaccine is not administered to the children." He said there were approximately 161,000 children in North Waziristan district alone who have not been administered with a polio vaccine since June last year.
Comments
Comments are closed.