CHITRAL, May 28: A suspected polio case has been detected here by the virtue of the symptoms but it is yet to be confirmed by laboratory reports. A child specialist at the DHQ hospital told Dawn a nine-year-old girl, Mazram Bibi, daughter of Nazim, resident of Chumurkhone village, had recently been admitted to the children ward of the DHQ hospital on account of acute flacid paralysis (AFP).

Dr Gulzar Ahmed said samples of her stool had been sent to the World Health Organization laboratory in the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, for tests.

He said nothing could be said with certainty before the arrival of the results of the laboratory tests and added that it was not necessary that every AFP case may also be a polio case.

He said due to the symptoms of the child, he had declared her an AFP case needing intensive investigations which are in progress.

The officials of the Expanded Programme of Immunization are constantly monitoring the child in the ward.