PESHAWAR, Aug 3: The NWFP Health Department has urged all the people to immunise their children below the age of five years against polio during a three-day vaccination campaign.
The drive would start on Aug 7 throughout the province and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas, said provincial Health Minister Inayatullah Khan at a press conference here on Friday.
He said that Pakistan, which had reported 11 polio cases this year, was one of the polio-hit countries along with India, Nigeria and Afghanistan.
The minister said it was wrong that oral polio vaccine (OPV) caused sterility or impotence among recipients. The parents, he said, were required to immunise their children to save them from permanent disability in future.
Flanked by health secretary Abdul Samad Khan, WHO’s chief of polio eradication initiative for NWFP and Fata Dr Abdul Jabbar, WHO’s Dr Sarfaraz Khan Afridi and Expanded Programme on Immunisation deputy director Dr Waheed Khan, the minister claimed that the Frontier province was close to eradication of polio.
The NWFP and Fata, he said, had recorded five polio cases this year – two of which were refugees and the virus detected in them could be traced to Afghanistan.
The NWFP and Fata had reported 33 cases in 2002, 33 in 2003, eight in 2004, five in 2005 and 16 in 2006, he said. “Of 11 cases detected in the country this year, five are from the NWFP and Fata, four from Sindh and two from Balochistan.”
Dr Waheed said OPV was manufactured by certified firms and there was no ingredient that could cause impotency and sterility.
He said about 10 billion doses had been administered to children since the launch of the programme in 1994 around the globe and no untoward side affects had been reported. Due to the OPV, polio had been wiped out from 125 countries of the world. Ulema had issued an edict that OPV was safe for human consumption and the only way to save children from the crippling disease, he said. He said there was no harm if children got more drops.
Dr Jabbar said there had been some security problems in Fata, but the situation had changed and now there was a demand for OPV.
MEASLES: The federal government, in collaboration with the WHO and Unicef, will conduct the second phase of the anti-measles campaign from Aug 20 to Sept 5 in the NWFP and Fata.
The first phase had been completed in the Mardan district in March. During the second phase, children from nine months to 13 years of age will be immunised against measles in 12 districts of the NWFP and three tribal agencies.
The rest of the districts in the NWFP and tribal units will be covered during the third phase to be launched in November.
