January 07, 2008	Monday	Zilhaj 27, 1428

KARACHI, Jan 6: The Expanded Programme on Immunisation, Sindh, has decided to run by mid-January its polio vaccine administration posts established for inter-city and inter-province child travellers at various entry and exit points in the province as round-the-clock vaccination facilities.

The project director of EPI, Sindh, Dr Salma Kausar Ali, told Dawn on Saturday that EPI polio centres, including those set up at airports, railway stations and inter-province bus stops at various sites, would now be made to work 24 hours, instead of six to eight hours.

She said the study of polio cases detected across the province during 2007 had once again given to understand that polio was making its way into Sindh from outside the province and as such there was a need to pay due attention to sorting out the problem by enhancing the monitoring and vaccination administration activities, particularly in the border areas of Sindh.

About a year back, EPI had established about 26 permanent centres at different points in Hyderabad, Umerkot, Sukkur, Dadu, Kandhkot, Larkana, Jacobabad and Ghotki, and Saddar, Bin Qasim, Gadap, Keamari, Shah Faisal and Landhi towns to administer oral polio vaccines to children under five years entering the cities concerned.

These centres are at present run in one shift of six to eight hours, where paramedical or other health staff belonging to district government concerned is supposed to vaccinate every child visiting the cities of Sindh by trains, planes or ships.

“Now we feel that children travelling by roads need more attention. So it has been decided to make some special budgetary allocations as well for the permanent centres so that more staff could be deployed there,” Dr Ali said, adding that the EPI intended to arrange staff for three shifts at the centres to ensure vaccination facilities for the whole day round the year.

There was a dire need to protect and to administer polio drops to children less than five years, who travelled in or out of various cities in the province irrespective of their place of origin, otherwise the goal of eliminating polio from Sindh and the country would be hard to achieve.

She said that increased sincere activities against polio were necessary at inter-province bus stops as Sindh was also faced with problems of excessive nomadic influx and frequent movement of population across the provincial border, who might be carriers of polio virus.

Hundreds of vehicles cross into Karachi from Balochistan via Hub River Road, while it is not possible for the fixed centres at transit points to cover all children brought in by these vehicles as most of them do not stop at these points, Dr Ali said.