KARACHI, Jan 17: A new round of national anti-polio campaign will be launched from Jan 20 to 22. This will be the country's 42nd round.

Bangladesh needed 12 rounds to get rid of polio. China and Iran each needed five. Pakistan, on the other hand, has had 41 so far but the disease is yet to be eradicated.

So said Abdul Hai Khan, who worked in Bangladesh for a number of years, and Azmoudeh, who hailed from Iran, on Saturday afternoon. Talking to Dawn after a press briefing on the planned National Immunization Days (NIDs), they said in all the countries from which polio had been banished, people from all walks of life joined hands to lick the dreaded disease.

"In Iran we did not have international support," said Mr Azmoudeh. "We developed the vaccines ourselves and did not have any support to administer these. So we had to administer them on our own too."

Mr Khan said compared to Pakistani volunteers, the Bangladeshi ones seemed to be more motivated. "Also, the number of volunteers in Bangladesh was far greater than in Pakistan."

Each NID costs millions of rupees. "The cost of running the campaign in Karachi alone is Rs4 million," a government official told Dawn.

"Multiply that figure with 40 and you will get an idea as to how much money has gone into funding the NIDs in Pakistan. The country has spent billions of rupees so far."

Earlier, during the briefing Imtiaz Ali Mughal of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) said in 1997 about 500 cases of polio were reported in the country. "In 2000, 257 cases were reported and in 2002 about 100 were reported."

Last year, he said, 99 cases were reported. Twenty-nine of the cases were reported in Sindh. He contended that during the peak season only one case was reported in the province. (Talking to this reporter after the briefing, a government official said three cases had been reported in Sindh during the season.)

Mr Mughal said the authorities planned NIDs in January, March, April, September and November of this year. "Sub-NIDs will also be observed."

The NIDs and sub-NIDs would target 7.9 children. "And no child is safe until every child is safe." Mr Mughal added that each child should be administered the polio drops at every NID.

Answering a question, the provincial director-general of health said if no case of polio was reported in the country for three years, it would be declared polio-free. Qadir Bakhsh Qadwani expressed the hope that polio would be eradicated in 2004.

In response to a question, Mr Qadwani said the EDOs were in a position to hide polio cases. "But wherever I go, I urge the EDOs and other health department officials to let us know if there are polio cases."

Speaking of wrong impressions about the NIDs, he said some newspapers had wrongly reported not long ago that the polio drops had killed some children in the interior of the province. "Media should dispel wrong impressions about the vaccination campaigns, not create new hurdles for us."

Iqbal Dewan, an additional secretary, said diseases were spread more often than not due to the use of contaminated water and unsafe foodstuff. "Yet whenever a disease rears its head, the people start blaming the health department for it."

Rana Syed of the Unicef, Abdul Hai Khan, Mr Azmoudeh and Abdul Wahid Bhurt were also present at the event which had been organized by the EPI and Sindh's health department in collaboration with the Unicef.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization is spending Rs200 million on the final round of its anti-polio campaign in Pakistan. This was stated on Saturday by a WHO representative, Dr George, in connection with the upcoming anti-polio drive, adds APP.

Dr George urged some town councillors to mobilize their resources to get all the children in their areas vaccinated from Jan 20 to 22.

SEMINAR: An advocacy seminar for Nazims and women councillors was held in the conference hall of the City Nazim's office on Saturday to help seek the public representatives' support during the upcoming NIDs.