PESHAWAR, March 21: Two new polio cases have been detected in Peshawar and Nowshera, bringing the total number of cases to three in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

According to officials of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation, one-year-old Ibrahim Noor son of Maulana Fazle Rabi of Regi village in Peshawar was diagnosed positive. The child didn’t have any dose of the oral polio vaccine due to refusal by his father, officials told Dawn.

“The child was missed in the polio vaccination due to refusal by the family,” officials said. With new cases surfacing, the total number of polio cases country-wide reached 20 in 2011.

The other case was detected in Nowshera which brought the number of infected districts in the country to 11. In Nowshera, which recorded its first polio case of this year, Abu Bakar son of Ayub, 12-month of age was tested positive for poliomyelitis at the National Institute of Health, Islamabad.

A resident of Nowshera Kalan, the child had received more than 7 doses of OPV including 3 doses through routine immunisation. The child reportedly travelled to Peshawar 25 days before the onset of paralysis.

Health authorities said that they were planning comprehensive implementation programmes in line with the provincial emergency plan (PEP) and National Emergency Action Plan for Polio Eradication in 2011. They said that additional immunisation campaigns were in the pipeline during which OPV would be administered to the children below the age of five years for 10 days.

Cases include six from Khyber Agency and two each from Mohmand Agency and FR Kohat in Fata, two from Peshawar and one from Nowshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; one each from Pishin and Qilla Abdullah in Balochistan; and one each from Tando Allahyar, Sanghar, Badin and two from Tando Mohammad Khan in Sindh.

The provincial government had chalked out vaccination plan for 2011 and planned to vaccinate all children with the administrative support of the district coordination officers, political agents and under the respective executive district health officers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the agency surgeons in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Officials said that the governor and the chief minister were directly involved in anti-polio campaigns and their support was important in the vaccination efforts because the province and Fata were becoming a concern for the international community over polio spread.