KARACHI, Sept 3: The Sindh Expanded Programme for Immunisation is launching a mop-up vaccination campaign in eight towns from Sept 4 to 6.

Sources privy to the project said that the authorities had decided to use the Monovalent Type-I Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV-I) during the special campaign after a child, who had already been vaccinated against polio in Swat, was found carrying the polio virus in an urban slum of Karachi.

The OPV-I was considered the most effective in the high transmission risk areas during the supplemental immunisation activities conducted in the country till November 2006, the sources said.

Sindh EPI Project Director Dr Salma Ali said the mop-up vaccination campaign would be conducted in Baldia, Orangi, Keamari, Site, Gadap, Bin Qasim and Gulshan-i-Iqbal towns and in some localities of Malir.

She said around one million children below the age of five would be vaccinated during the campaign, which was being launched after a gap of about nine months. She said the special campaign had been planned after a child in Baldia was tested positive for polio last month.

Dr Ali said that the two-year-old boy, who had come along with his elders from Swat on July 22 to attend a wedding here in Karachi, could not go back for some domestic reason. He had a previous history of diarrhoea and had developed fever and weakening of limbs in the first week of August, she said.

The project director said that stool samples from the patient were taken and sent to the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, which confirmed the diagnosis in the last week of August. However, she said that proper announcement about the case would be made only after receiving a confirmation report from the World Health Organization.

About the suspected polio carrier, it was further learnt that he had already been vaccinated against polio in Swat. In Karachi, he was initially attended at a local dispensary and later admitted to the National Institute of Child Health in the mid of August.