UAE administered 508 million doses of polio vaccine to over 86 million children in Pakistan in seven years

Abu Dhabi: Upon the directives of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and with the support of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and the monitoring of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs, to offer humanitarian and development aid to Pakistan, support its health sector and launch prevention programmes, the UAE-Pakistan Assistance Programme (UAE PAP) has announced that 508,092,472 doses of polio vaccine were administered to more than 86 million children in Pakistan over seven years, under the UAE Polio Vaccination Campaign carried out in Pakistan from 2014 to the end of 2020.

In his statement on this occasion, Abdullah Khalifa Al Ghafli, Director of UAE PAP, said that the campaign’s success in providing more than 500 million vaccine doses over seven years reflects the excellence and efficiency of the UAE’s humanitarian efforts and initiatives, upon the directives of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa, with the support Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, and the monitoring of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed.

It was also revealed that even during the challenges posed by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the campaign managed to reach out to 16 million children and provided more than 52,515,000 doses since July 2020.

The programme noted that the efforts to launch vaccination campaigns in various Pakistani provinces witnessed the participation of more than 103,000 doctors, observers and members of the vaccination teams, as well as more than 82,000 security personnel and coordination teams. The mobile teams have also managed to reach out to 22 camps of Afghan refugees at the international border checkpoints where more than 597,000 Afghan children were vaccinated.