February 04, 2007	Sunday	Muharram 15, 1428

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

KARACHI, Feb 3: Two new cases of polio have been confirmed in 2007 in Sindh. The infected are baby children from Karachi and Jacobabad, says Dr Salma Kauser Ali, provincial manager of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI).

Talking to Dawn on Saturday, Dr Kauser said that the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, about a week back had confirmed that it had diagnosed one Bismillah, eight months old, of Baldia town, Karachi, and Salamti, two years old, of Jacobabad, as confirmed polio cases. A total of 12 confirmed polio cases were recorded in Sindh last year.

The EPI manager, however, clarified that a number of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) cases, including 12 from Liaquatabad town of Karachi, were referred to the authorities concerned, but none of them was found positive for polio. She said that two confirmed cases were observed as children with low immunity against polio virus as they had been administered oral polio drops adequately.

Referring to reports about one boy child of eight years from Khairpur, she said that the boy had been suspected of carrying polio virus, but any final say was still to come out as investigations were in progress. She noted that the latest victim of polio in Jacobabad, Salamti, was located in vicinity where one polio case had also been detected in 2006.

About lately confirmed cases of polio and number of AFP, she said that surveillance and monitoring by district and town administrations in Jacobabad, Tando Mohammad Khan, Khairpur, Hyderabad and Karachi needed to be enhanced further.

According to the criterion, two cases of acute flaccid paralysis had to be reported from every single population of 100,000 children and this was missing in some cases, she said, adding that both under and over-reporting of AFP were serious matters and as such relevant staff are required to be vigilant and more responsible.