LAHORE, April 19: Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi is likely to inaugurate the three-day anti-polio vaccination campaign on Tuesday (today). The chief minister is scheduled to administer anti-polio vaccine to children at the Children's Hospital.

Three polio cases, two from Muzaffargarh and one from Faisalabad, have been reported in the Punjab till the end of March this year. Unicef adviser Pervaiz Masood, a former chief secretary of the Punjab, had told a meeting at Gujranwala on April 8 that as many as 11 polio cases were detected in the province during the last year.

It may be mentioned that the figure only included number of patients who were brought to the state-run health facilities. The cases handled by private medical practitioners, general practitioners, quacks and other traditional healers could not be counted owing to absence of surveillance system.

Survey reports of the project wing of the health department revealed that the state-run health facilities hardly provide one-fourth of the total health coverage in the Punjab.

The sources in the health department said that the private sector had been catering to the needs of 65 per cent of the patients in the province. There has been no surveillance system to check polio cases reported to the private sector health facilities, they said.