04 March 2005	Friday	22 Muharram 1426

DERA GHAZI KHAN, March 3: The official claim of making the district polio free have been belied by a 10-member evaluation team which indicated some places in the settled area in Dera Ghazi Khan tehsil and tribal belt where none of the children could be vaccinated in successive campaigns.

The team had recently visited the district to evaluate the success of successive anti-polio campaigns. It visited selected localities in the settled and tribal areas and found that there were places where no vaccination team has ever gone.

Sources told Dawn on Thursday that the team visited a village near Dera airport and Barthi, the headquarter of Buzdar tribe in the Tribal Area, where people told them that their children had never been given anti-polio drops.

When contacted, Tribal Area tehsil Nazim Usman Khan Buzdar said people from Bail Pather, the highest mountain area of the Punjab, Zinda Pir, Dob and several other areas had come with the complaint that none of the vaccinators and health teams ever visited their areas.

He said he had informed the EDO (health) about the situation. He maintained that he was not informed by the health department about the visit of evaluation team, otherwise he would himself pointed out the areas.

District Health Officer Dr Rafiq, however, claimed that the evaluation team identified the areas where gypsies were putting up without any vaccination. The team had vaccinated 94 per cent of the population, he added.

It may be remembered that Dera EDO (health) Dr Faiz Ali Jaskani had told the district council during its Feb 28 session that 1,000 teams would give anti-polio drops to the children in the district. He had sought the help of union council Nazims in administering drops but neither the district government nor administration did so.

The Punjab chief secretary had called a meeting of DCOs of five districts of south Punjab, including Dera Ghazi Khan, Rajanpur and Muzaffargarh, for their poor performance in anti-polio drives.

On the other hand, the Dera Ghazi Khan health department is not taking the anti-polio campaigns seriously as it has appointed dispensers, lady health supervisors and even area watchmen as zonal in charges for the campaign instead of appointing doctors. For instance, medical officer of Gaddai BHU is working as area in charge under a dispenser.