June 23, 2008	Monday	Jamadi-us-Sani 18, 1429

HYDERABAD, June 22: The Centre for People’s Empowerment and Equality (CPEE) at a meeting of its executive committee here on Sunday expressed concern over rising number of polio cases in the country, particularly in Sindh, as 11 confirmed cases were reported in the first half of the year.

The meeting of the CPEE held with its chairperson Nasreen Shakeel Pathan in the chair discussed detection of fresh polio cases and observed that the country was most likely to miss the target of being polio free status.

The meeting noted with concern that these victims of polio cases were not vaccinated and majority of them were migrants which meant that proper vaccination and immunisation campaign was not being implemented in border areas and tribal belt of the country.

The meeting said that millions of rupees were spent on the polio immunisation campaign but the results were not visible and more cases were emerging in rural areas.

It said that Sindh had been the victim of poor health-related campaigns because of non-participation of community and especially the elected representatives were not being taken on board to make the polio campaign a success story.

The meeting was of the view that senior health officials of the country hade indicated that there was a problem of proper vigilance and monitoring of the campaign.

The meeting said that there was a dire need of bringing the entire campaign into one centralised body to oversee the performance and monitor whether the targeted population have been covered in the campaign or not.

It said that the system of anti-polio campaigns were not functioning well and detection of 11 cases were a proof that a lot needed to be done in this regard.

It called upon World Health Organisation and Unicef to look into this sorry state of anti-polio campaign and demanded that monitoring should be put in place in consultation with civil society groups and non-governmental organisations to make the campaign a success for saving the future generation of the country.

It offered CPEE’s cooperation to Unicef and WHO and other allied government agencies and called upon federal health minister Sherry Rehman and others to focus on the anti- polio campaign.