PESHAWAR, Sept 6: The confirmation of 10th child infected with poliomyelitis in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has taken the health authorities by surprise as the case is reported from an area which has witnessed unprecedented vaccination drives during the last one month.

The laboratory test confirmed on Thursday that 20-month-old Gul Rukh daughter of Mohammad Daud, a resident of Wahid Ghari Afghan Refugees camp in Khazana area of Peshawar, was infected by polio. She had been administered seven doses of oral polio vaccine.

“The case has taken us by surprise because we have run four vaccination campaigns in 32 ‘high risk’ union councils which also include this area,” officials associated with the drive told Dawn.

They said that last month the commissioner and district coordination officer of Peshawar spearheaded the campaign in the same union council from where the new case was reported.

Wahid Garhi camp was supposed to be covered by the Project Directorate of Health of Afghan Refugees but following the detection of the first case in early September, the provincial health department intervened as part of its global commitment to eradicate polio from the province this year.

“Only in September four vaccination campaigns were carried out by the department and it was never thought that a polio case would come from here,” the officials said.

They said that Pakistan had been in spotlight since the detection of the highest number of polio cases (144) in the country in 2010.

“The detection of such a high number of polio cases has prompted the international community as well as United Nations to focus on eradication of the crippling disease as they think that Pakistan has been transporting the ailments to the countries long declared polio-free,” officials added.

They said that Peshawar had recorded five cases so far but the virus was in full circulation, causing grave concern among the government and the partner organisations.

They said that Balochistan recorded 44 cases of the total 103 followed by the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with 27 cases mainly because of the bad law and order situation, which hampered the access of vaccinators to the targeted children but the cases from Peshawar where the health workers didn’t face any problem was a matter of deep concern.

According to a notification by the health department, the newly-infected child lived at a distance of half-a-kilometre from the place of last reported polio case and there were frequent visits between the two families. “It is extremely dangerous because more children can get infected if quality campaigns are not conducted,” officials said.

They said that quality of the campaign monitoring should be also improved so that vaccinators could cover the missed children.

Despite the fact that Peshawar district achieved overall coverage of 95 per cent or above in most of the drives but it could not achieve the target set forth in the National Emergency Action Plan indicating sub-optimal quality at the UC level, officials added.