KARACHI, April 19: The governor of Sindh opened a new round of campaign against polio during a ceremony held on Monday at the Dow University of Health Sciences. More than 40 such rounds have been launched so far but the disease remains to be banished from the country.

The latest round was inaugurated in the backdrop of the disappointing news that three new cases of polio might be confirmed soon in Sindh. Two of them, which are likely to be confirmed, have been reported in Ghotki and the third one has been reported in Jacobabad, M. Azmoudeh of the World Health Organization told Dawn.

He revealed that initial tests on the samples taken from both Ghotki and Jacobabad were positive for polio. "Now, a second series of tests will determine conclusively whether the cases are of polio or not," he remarked.

Meanwhile, the new anti-polio drive began with a message from Dr Ishratul Ibad in which he said the situation in Sindh about polio had improved considerably during the last seven months. "Seven or eight months ago, Sindh was fourth among the four provinces in terms of performance against the disease.

"Today, however, we are number one." His presence at the launch ceremony on Monday, he said, was proof that his government was serious in combating the menace of polio.

The governor said that ahead of the new round of the campaign, which will last until April 22, a new strategy had been carefully formulated. "This strategy needs to be implemented properly and I urge all the Nazims and other representatives of the local government to play their due role in this regard."

Ashique H. Memon, the provincial health secretary, said on the occasion that with the appointment of a health minister his department had been upgraded and as such it was in a better position to stamp out polio from the province.

Mr Memon also urged the vice-chancellor of the Dow University of Health Sciences to undertake worthwhile research on the issues in polio eradication. The Consul General of Japan, Kanji Hanagata, told the audience that so far his country had donated $48.5 million for polio vaccines to Pakistan. "Ten million dollars have been donated this year."

Japan, he said, was by far the most important donor so far as efforts for eradication of polio were concerned. The Japanese consul general said that under its international assistance programme, called Jica, Japan had wholly or partly funded 209 projects in Pakistan.

"About 30 per cent of these projects are health-related." He expressed his desire to see Islamabad commit more resources to the health sector. The provincial health minister, Naeem Ishtiaq, appealed to the parents to take their children to the specially created vaccination centres in case the outreach teams failed to reach them. "Not a single child should remain unvaccinated during the three-day campaign which will target 6 million children under the age of five."

Dr H.B. Memon, director-general of health, said 18,000 teams would be administering polio drops to some six million children all over Sindh. He reiterated the health department's determination to make the province polio-free by the end of this year.

After the ceremony, Mr Azmoudeh told this reporter that the routine immunization in Karachi was quite poor. He was of the opinion that until each child was vaccinated against polio during every round, not much progress could be made on the issue.

The WHO's representative to Sindh also claimed that the media were not doing enough to help drive polio out of the country. Dr Asif Aslam of Unicef said each round was similar to all the previous ones. "In my opinion, each round should be better than the earlier ones. But, this is not the case. We are doing every thing in the same old manner which is not very effective."