September 26, 2008	Friday	Ramazan 25, 1429

PESHAWAR/LAHORE, Sept 25: Another four cases of polio -- three in the NWFP and one in Punjab -- have been found, raising to 64 the number of victims of the deadly disease detected in the country this year.

A four-year-old girl from Swat, a nine-month-old boy from Peshawar, a 16-month-old boy from Khyber Agency and a minor girl from Lahore tested positive for poliomyelitis on Thursday.

With the latest detections, the number of polio victims rose to 26 in the NWFP and Fata and to 14 in Punjab. The children from Swat and Khyber Agency were not administered a single dose of oral polio vaccine (OPV).

Experts attribute the abrupt surge in polio cases to poor campaigns and irregular immunisation. A large number of children in the NWFP and Fata did not get polio drops over the past two years, they added.

Health workers involved in the anti-polio programme complained that there were many loopholes in recording the vaccinated children. “Several children were marked by vaccinators as covered but when crosschecked these proved otherwise.”

They said that in some areas, vaccinators had shown 15 to 20 per cent more children as vaccinated than the actual number of immunised children.

In these cases, health workers record names of children on sheets as covered, but in reality they have not been immunised.

The experts stressed the need for maintaining vigilance at all levels to ensure effective campaigns, strong surveillance and more focus on improving routine immunisation.