KARACHI, Oct 27: The Expanded Programme on Immunisation, Sindh, with the assistance of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Unicef, will start its two-week supplemental immunisation campaign against measles in the province from Nov 12.
This was announced by the project director of EPI, Sindh, Dr Salma Kauser Ali, at a press briefing held at a local hotel here on Saturday.
The EPI director said that Dadu district had not been earmarked for the anti-measles campaign as similar activities had already been conducted there in March, 2007, under a pilot project.
She said that the drive was aimed at providing parents with a second opportunity to vaccinate about 13 million children aged between nine months and 13 years.
The campaign had been named “Measles catch-up campaign” as a large number of infants were left without measles vaccine coverage, whereas in the case of those already vaccinated, the efficacy was around 85 per cent, Dr Ali added.
The EPI official said that all children in the target age group would be vaccinated regardless of their history of measles immunisation or illness.
The purpose of the catch-up campaign was to reduce the number of susceptible individuals in a population who had never been vaccinated or had undergone primary vaccination failures, she said, adding that the vaccination teams would visit schools, residential areas, high-rise buildings and villages or sparse population.
Polio vaccination
Dr Ali said that around 6.529 million children under the age of five would also be administered anti-polio oral drops with Vitamin A supplementation across the province on Oct 30, 31 and Nov 1. About 19,000 teams of vaccinators would be deployed for the purpose on these days, she added.
Earlier, at a review meeting participants, including EDOs (health) from across the province and town health officers along with taluka level health executers, were told that the number of confirmed and compatible polio cases for 2007 had so far been recorded as eight. As many as 12 polio cases were recorded in Sindh last year.
The meeting was informed that after analysing the data of Sindh, 115 union councils out of the total 1,198 had been identified as high-risk areas and needed special attention.
