Around 0.7 million children below the age of five, will be vaccinated in Federally Administered Tribal Areas, as a special four-day anti-polio campaign started here on Monday. The polio eradication drive will be carried out from August 26 to August 28, which formally inaugurated by Additional Chief Secretary FATA Arbab Mohammad Arif, who dispensed drops of Polio vaccine to the Children here at the FATA Secretariat Monday Morning.
In total, 2656 teams comprising trained Polio volunteers would dispense drops to targeted 712604 children all over the FATA agencies and FRS. According to break up the Polio teams include 2340 Mobile teams, 241 fixed teams and 75 transit teams that would do the job under appropriate security arrangements. This time elaborate security arrangements with the help of Army personals have been made to make the Polio Eradication Campaign in FATA a real success.
According to officials sources said nearly 300,000 others would miss out because of threats from militants. A total of 117 cases of polio have been recorded so far in Pakistan this year. The World Health Organisation declared a global "public health emergency" in early May after new polio cases began surfacing and spreading across borders from countries including Pakistan. It is one of only three countries, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, where the crippling disease remains endemic.
Amid insecurity, some 56 people including health workers and police providing security have been killed in militant attacks on polio vaccination teams in Pakistan since December 2012. "A four-day vaccination drive began on Monday to administer polio drops to children in tribal regions," senior campaign official Ikhtiar Ali. He said a total of 712,604 children were being targeted for vaccination in the four-day campaign, but warned that another 288,708 would miss out.
Children in North Waziristan, South Waziristan, some areas of Khyber tribal district and Bannu Frontier Region would not be given polio drops because of security problems. A total of 117 cases of polio have been recorded so far in Pakistan this year, of which 85 have been in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The seven semi-autonomous tribal areas along the Afghan border are the epicentre of the country s polio cases. Pakistan is responsible for 80 percent of polio cases diagnosed around the world this year.
Earlier, speaking on the occasion Additional Chief Secretary FATA Arbab Mohammad Arif called upon the people engaged with the Polio eradication campaign to ensure that all the target children under five years of age are vaccinated in order to protect them from the disability and rid the society from the menace of Polio once forever. He also appealed to the community members to extend fullest co-operation with the Polio volunteers so that no children are left without dispensing the Polio drops and the deadly disease is eradicated from the region once for all.
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