As many as 16 cases of polio have come to the fore in the year 2012 and two of them in the province of Sindh. This was stated by the Sindh Minister for Health, Dr Sagheer Ahmed. He was presiding over a meeting to review the polio eradication campaign on Saturday. The Minister said that of the two cases in Sindh one is from Mirpurkhas and the other is from Hyderabad.
He pointed out that in 1994 when the polio eradication campaign was initiated the number of polio cases in Pakistan was nearly 3,000. Dr Sagheer said that in the year 2011, this number was 38 and 11 of them were from Sindh. He exhorted the District Health Officers in the province to put in concerted efforts in order to secure the desired results from the polio-eradication campaign. The Minister also warned that no dereliction would be tolerated in this regard and added if target in a district is not met then departmental action would be initiated against the concerned DHO.