The third anti-polio campaign of the year will commence from today (Monday) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's 25 districts, including tribal districts and Afghan refugee camps wherein over 5.5 million children under the age of five will be administered anti-polio drops. Around 4.7 million such children are in settled districts and 0.8 million in tribal districts.
According of provincial health department, the campaign will be conducted in 18 settled and 7 tribal districts, including Peshawar, Charsadda, Mardan, Swabi, Swat, Malakand, Battagram, Chitral, Kohat, Karak, Hangu, Bannu, Dir Upper, Dir Lower, Lakki Marwat, Tank, Dera Ismail Khan, Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan and South Waziristan.
A total of 21861 (17588+4273) teams have been constituted to vaccinate the target children out of which 15525 (15547+3937) are mobile teams, 1196 (1187+235) fixed teams, 820 (854+101) transit teams, 153 roaming teams and 4075 (4052+1134) area in-charges who have been deployed to ensure quality campaign.
The health department's officials told this scribe that all age vaccination would begin at Torkham border for all the passengers and visitors crossing international border in view of the virus circulation in the last two endemic countries of the world.
They said strict security measures should be taken to provide favourable environment to the teams to carry out quality campaign as low transmission season was the best opportunity to weaken and hit the virus and stop wild polio virus transmission in the region. They said more than 20 thousand security personnel in the settled districts would be deployed with the teams to ensure their personnel security during the March campaign. They thanked KP Home Department, Pak Army, KP Police and other law enforcing agencies for their support to the campaign.
Meanwhile, Capt Kamran Ahmad (retd) of KP Emergency Operation Centre appealed to the parents to turn down propaganda and misconception and vaccinate their children against polio as it is the safest vaccine used by all Muslim countries. He said polio eradication is national duty being performed under the leadership of the government with the technical support of partners.
He lamented that wild polio virus was still circulating in Pakistan and Afghanistan whereas the world has eliminated it long ago using the same vaccine. Therefore, he emphasised it a matter of national pride for responsible country of the world to give final push to polio and eradicate the disease from the last endemic region of the globe thus making the world polio-free.
Pakistan has recorded six polio cases in 2019 so far; one each from Bannu, Hangu, Bajaur and Khyber districts of KP province, Karachi of Sindh province and Lahore of Punjab province, respectively.
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