KARACHI: Officials concede failure of anti-measles drive
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Nov 29: The recently concluded anti-measles supplemental campaign failed to immunise thousands of children, mainly students of the city’s major schools.
The health department officials concerned have attributed the failure to the non-cooperative attitude adopted by administrators of such schools.
The officials were speaking at a session chaired by provincial caretaker Minister for Health Fouzia Lari here on Thursday. The session was organised by the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), WHO and Unicef (Karachi) for sharing some details of the campaign with newsmen.
The two-week long anti-measles campaign was completed across the province on Nov 28. It was aimed at providing parents with a second opportunity to get their children aged between nine months and 13 years vaccinated. The target set under the programme was 13.8 million children in the province, excluding Dadu, where a campaign had been launched in March 2007 under a pilot project.
One of the officials, Dr Iqbal Memon, said that the drive had been named as “Measles Catch-up Campaign” as a large number of infants had been left out under their routine immunisation. “After the first round, there remained the chances that 70 per cent of the children above 9 months age are not covered while the efficacy of the vaccine in the case of those already vaccinated normally came to around 85 per cent,” he said, adding that all children aged up to 13 years needed the supplementary vaccines. Such efforts should be made to vaccinate the schoolchildren in Karachi who could not be reached due to non-cooperative attitude of the administrators of their schools or parents of the children.
Dr Salma Kousar Ali, project director of the EPI Sindh, said that due to a lack of awareness among parents and school administrators, the vaccination teams could not reach a large number of deserving students in Sindh, particular Karachi.
“We believe that vaccination against the preventable diseases is children’s right, regardless of their history of measles immunisation or illness. However, it has disappointing to note that administrators of a number of schools in the city’s posh areas did not open their doors to our teams, despite repeated requests having been made to them.”
She did not give the exact number of the left over students, saying that reports were being gathered and it would take some time to prepare a list of the schools which did not cooperate with the teams.
Data awaited
The data pertaining to vaccination or exact coverage are yet to be received from districts. Dr Salma, however, citing her visits to various districts and initial information, said that 90 per cent of the target had been achieved in the districts other than Karachi.
“In the case of Karachi, we had to face refusal from parents of deserving children mainly those living in posh areas and, as such, the achievement rate has relatively been lower,” the EPI director regretted.
In her presidential remarks, Health Minister Fouzia Lari said that it was heartening to note that despite some odds, the EPI had been able to cover 90 per cent coverage of the target population in the latest campaign across the province.
About the complaint of non-cooperation on the part of parents or school managements, the minister argued they might have decided to get their children vaccinated at some good hospital.
“As I have been told that the purpose of this campaign was to reduce the number of susceptible individuals in a population that had never been vaccinated or had undergone primary vaccination failures, I think parents of left over children should move accordingly,” she said.
She mentioned her recent visits to Khairpur, Sukkur, Thatta and other parts of the interior Sindh, and said that neonatal and maternal deaths appeared to be a matter serious concern.
The minister said that the government would make effort towards meeting the shortage of doctors and paramedical staff in hospitals and health care centres in the province.
