PESHAWAR, June 28: Polio continues to haunt children in the NWFP and Fata as two more polio cases were reported in the province, bringing to seven the number of polio victims this year, official said.

"Both cases were confirmed by the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad, and Communicable Disease Control (CDC), Centre, Atlanta, USA, one in May and other this month," said Deputy Director of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), NWFP, Dr Waheed Khan.

Eight-month-old Nazia, who was diagnosed as a confirmed polio patient, belongs to North Waziristan and another, one-year-old Laiba hails from Mansehra district. They said the one in Mansehra district, who was diagnosed as positive, had been given six doses of anti-polio drops, whereas the other baby in North Waziristan had got five drops.

Dr Khan said that according to WHO's guidelines, every child below the age of five years, should be given at least 10 doses to provide him/her with full protection against the crippling ailment.

He said the main cause of polio among the children having had anti-polio drops, was weak immune system of recipients. Likewise, he said exposure of vaccines to heat or sunlight also rendered them ineffective and should be destroyed.

Last year, the NWFP had 32 polio cases, the largest number in the country. "There is a possibility that the child who was diagnosed as positive may have had diarrhoea when he was administered anti-polio drops," said another official at the directorate of health.

So far, a total of 17 cases have been reported in the whole country, including seven each in NWFP and Sindh and three in Punjab, while no case has been reported from Balochistan this year.

Punjab health department, the official said, had accused the NWFP of being responsible for Punjab's reported polio case. The official claimed that polio was transmitted in Punjab-based children by infected children who had migrated from Frontier province.

Dr Khan said that eight special rounds were being conducted annually, in which the missed children are also given drops by specially constituted teams. "There must be a solution to this problem, because WHO, Unicef, etc., who are the main donors in the polio campaigns, have expressed their apprehensions about the prevalence of the disease in the country, specially in the Frontier province," said a source at the health department.

He said the children suffering from diarrhoea, malnutrition and immunity problems should either be treated before administering drops to them or be put in the category of high- risk groups to be handled by special polio vaccinators.

The officials said the government had pledged to eradicate polio from Pakistan by December 2004 but indications were that the crippling ailment would continue to haunt the country in the wake of poor drop campaign.

Shortage of staff, the officials said, was preventing the staff of Expanded Programme on Immunization from reaching every child. The NWFP had appointed 800 EPI workers when the programme was launched in the province in the early eighties.

They were required to give drops to every child below the age of five, constituting 17 per cent of the total population. The population, he said, had since doubled, but the staff had not been increased.

Officials said that WHO had been spending Rs53 million every year on the polio campaign in the NWFP and Fata, but lack of coordination between the directorate of health and the world health agency was hindering efforts to eradicate the disease.