KARACHI, March 5: Speakers belonging to international health organisations and the district administration of Karachi at a meeting held here on Saturday before the launch of a three-day anti-polio campaign on Monday lamented Karachi's continued failure to win the zero-polio case reporting status and called for making genuine efforts to rid the city of the dreaded disease during the year. Karachi district coordination officer Muhammad Hussain Syed said that it was embarrassing for a mega city like Karachi to report polio cases despite having all the resources and enjoying the support and commitment of all sections of society.

The WHO team leader for polio eradication initiatives in Sindh, Dr Yehiya Abdel Ghaffar Seida, said that Sindh, including Karachi, was now a great source of concern because it was not coming up with a quality anti-polio campaign.

The deputy manager of the expanded programme on immunisation, Dr Rizwana Memon, said that time had come to realise the gravity of the situation and do something to save Pakistan and Sindh.

The meeting was also attended by town health officers and polio campaign supervisors, who are set to start another three-day oral polio vaccine (OPV) administration campaign to cover over 2.2 million children under five years of age in the city, like other parts of the province and the country, from March 7.

The participants of the meeting were told that Sindh reported a total of 27 laboratory confirmed cases in 2010 which included three cases from Karachi. The city attained a zero case reporting status in 2005, but after that it failed to maintain the status and continued reporting between two and four cases every year.

In all, 2.24 million children aged up to five years would be reached during the ensuing national immunisation campaign in 18 towns of Karachi, by over 13,000 health department employees, lady health workers, social workers and volunteers under the supervision of town health officers and vaccination supervisors.

Sindh health department officials and representatives of the World Health Organisation and Unicef would monitor the campaign, the participants of the meeting were told.

The executive district officer of health, Dr Nasir Javed Sheikh, said that though the overall rate of coverage of children during the last campaign held in the city from January 31 was 95 per cent, there were towns like Sadddar, Keamari, North Karachi, North Nazimabad, Malir and Gulberg which showed the coverage below than the required level of 95pc.

He referred to the support the health department of the CDGK had managed to get from various departments of the district government — such as the education, revenue and social works departments — and expressed the hope that the relations among the departments would further be strengthened for the coming polio eradication campaigns in the city.

He suggested that the education department issue certain directives to heads of primary schools to get permission from parents of nursery class students for vaccination in schools during the campaign.

He said that religious scholars and prayer leaders of mosques had also extended support in connection with the anti-polio campaign.

Polio-hit countries WHO team leader Dr Ghaffar said that Pakistan was included in a list of four polio-epidemic hit countries with the highest number of polio cases as 144 cases were detected in Pakistan in 2010 against the 89 cases detected in the country in 2009.

Pakistan was now the only global threat due to its polio case situation while the war-hit Afghanistan which used to be considered a poliovirus reservoir reported 24 cases in 2010, India reported 42 cases and Nigeria reported 19 cases, he added.

He said that now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa plus Fata and Sindh were the main problem areas in view of their polio cases.

However, it was incomprehensible as to why Sindh, which had no law and order problem or any obvious hindrance in accessing deserving children, was failing to ensure a 100pc quality polio campaign, he said.

He said that there was still a need for more commitment and ownership to the vaccination campaign and added that the poliovirus circulated very much in the environment of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gadap and Baldia towns and health workers were required to stay alert and ensure a 100pc immunity among the children under five against polio.

On the basis of field feedback he said that in UC-1 of Orangi town young teams were deployed, while in UC-2 law and order remained a cause for concern during the last campaign.

He said that UC-1, UC-8 in Saddar gave highly poor performance, while UC-1 in North Nazimabad also performed poorly and UC-2 was affected by law and order problem.

The DCO of Karachi said that the teams which would take part in the campaign from 7-9 March would get performance based cash rewards and certificate of excellence.

Sindh EPI manager Dr Rizwana said that things had started changing as there were considerable political and administrative commitments for the polio eradication activities.

Dr Shaukat of Unicef and DO preventive Dr Aslam Pervez also spoke at the meeting.