Islamabad: Pakistan resumed its anti-polio vaccination drive in selected areas on Monday after a four-month suspension due to coronavirus pandemic.
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr. Zafar Mirza said the campaign against polio is being reactivated as the COVID-19 situation in the country shows improvement. He added that the vaccination teams would strictly follow all the health guidelines, the standard operation procedures (SOPs), to ensure social distancing and safety during the anti-polio drive.
For now, the door-to-door campaign will be carried out in selected districts and the team would also increase awareness about coronavirus preventive measures and inform mothers and children about other essential vaccinations.
In the first phase, more than 800,000 children under the age of five will be vaccinated in Faisalabad, Attock, South Waziristan, and parts of Karachi and Quetta.
“We are initially aiming to target areas with continuous poliovirus circulation to protect children against the crippling polio disease during this case response,” said Dr Rana Muhammad Safdar, who supervises Pakistan’s Polio Eradication programme. He added that the vaccination team and staff are being trained on “preventive measures to be followed during vaccination, including protocols of door-knocking and marking, keeping the desired physical distance inside homes, and ensuring safe handling of a child while vaccinating and finger marking.
Pakistan has recently witnessed a spike in polio cases. This year, Pakistan reported a total of 58 polio cases, including 21 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 20 from Sindh, 14 from Balochistan and 3 from Punjab. Pakistan is one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with its neighbour Afghanistan.
Pakistan Polio Eradication programme had suspended all polio related activities in the last week of March, except surveillance. The lockdown and travel restrictions seriously affected the provisions of essential vaccines to around 700,000 newborns per month and also widened the immunity gap among vulnerable children.
“With the disruption of essential immunisation services due to the COVID-19 pandemic, children are continuously at a higher risk of contracting polio and other vaccine-preventable diseases,” said Dr. Zafar Mirza.
“As we learn to live with COVID-19, I urge all parents and caregivers to ensure vaccination of their children to protect them from all vaccine-preventable diseases including the paralyzing Polio. Ensuring safe vaccination and well-being of children is our utmost priority,” he said.
Pakistan’s polio department has planned large-scale programmes in August and September and three nationwide campaigns during the last quarter of 2020 to address the challenges and reach children missed during March to June when the country reported a constant surge in the coronavirus cases.
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