Saira Afzal Tarar, Minister of State for National Health Services Regulation & Co-ordination, while chairing a high level meeting to review the last polio campaign and preparation of the upcoming polio round this month, expressed concern over cancellation of the polio campaign in parts of Karachi for want of security. The minister was informed that five UCs in Karachi had to cancel the last polio campaign over security deployment issues.
The high-level meeting was attended by Ayesha Raza Farooq, Prime Minister Focal Person on Polio Eradication; Muhammed Ayub Sheikh Secretary National Health Services; Dr Assad Hafeez DG Health, and heads of International Partner Agencies. The minister said "we need to focus on quality of campaigns rather than frequency and concentrate our efforts on the consistently non-performing UCs. The criteria for quality campaign a bare minimum of 90 percent coverage. Any coverage less than this is not acceptable," she added. She said some UCs were conducting campaigns frequently, but unable to reach the 90 percent mark. With regard to the Karachi situation it was agreed to discuss the proposal of holding special campaigns on weekly basis with stick security cordon and concentration of both polio teams and security personnel.
To this end, Secretary National Health Services was requested to hold urgent meeting with CCPO Karachi to finalise arrangements with regard to security deployment. It was also decided to constitute a special committee for Karachi on polio eradication. The meeting expressed appreciation for improvement in performance of Kila Abdullah in Balochistan and FR Bannu for achieving high level of IPV coverage.-PR