Pakistan: Sindh CM launches seven-day anti-polio campaign in Karachi, Hyderabad
The campaign will cover 9.9 million children below the age of five
Karachi: A seven-day immunisation campaign has been launched to protect the children of Karachi and Hyderabad against the poliovirus.
Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, accompanied by Health Minister, Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho, and other senior officials kicked off the campaign at the National Institute of Child Health in Karachi.
After completing the polio immunisation drive in Karachi and Hyderabad, the vaccination campaign will be conducted in other districts of Sindh from August 22 to August 28.
The campaign will cover 9.9 million children below the age of five. Out of these, 2.4 million boys and girls are in Karachi.
After inaugurating the campaign, the CM told media persons that the number of parents refusing to administer polio drops to their children had dropped by 50 per cent in Sindh.
He said that polio was an incurable disease, which created devastating impacts on the health of the affected children but it could easily be prevented just by inoculation with two polio drops.
He lauded officials and agencies involved in the campaign as no new polio case had been reported from anywhere in Sindh since July 2020.
He said the environmental samples collected by the health authorities last year in the province didn’t carry poliovirus.
Shah said that special immunisation campaigns were conducted for the children coming to Sindh from the upcountry along with their families as in April this year polio cases had been reported from Southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
He said that over 500,000 children from other provinces had been covered under the inoculation drives in Sindh as polio drops were administered on the inter-provincial borders and in the areas where families hailing from the upcountry resettled.
He appreciated the services of the law enforcement agencies in providing security cover to the polio teams.
The CM said the anti-polio efforts of the government would continue till the eradication of the crippling viral disease from the country.