KARACHI: Another polio case in Sindh – ninth overall – of the last year has been confirmed now as the provincial authorities received a report from the National Institute of Health (NIH) from Islamabad on Friday detecting the virus in a 23-month-old boy, who already died last month, officials said.

The ill-fated boy, Arsalan, was the seventh child from Karachi and second from its least covered Baldia Town neighbourhood, which, together with Gadap Town, has been offering greater resistance to polio teams, particularly during the last two years.

Officials in the expanded programme on immunisation (EPI) of Sindh said Arsalan, son of Mohammad Shahid, a Pakhtun labourer and a resident of Ittehad Town of UC-2 of Baldia, had been brought to the National Institute of Child Health (NICH) on Dec 10, 2013 with high-grade fever and ‘severely effective’ four limbs — arms and legs.

“The child’s symptoms clearly indicated that he had contracted with the crippling virus. We informed the World Health Organisation officials and planned to take his stool samples on Dec 13,” said Dr Durre Naz Jamal, deputy chief of the EPI.However, she told Dawn the child died before the samples were taken on Dec 13.

She said to confirm whether the child was infected with the polio virus, the EPI officials, as per standard procedures, took the samples of ‘three immediate contacts’ of the expired child — a five-year-old sibling (brother) and two cousins.

“The report we have just received from Islamabad confirms positive strain of the virus in his brother, but of both the cousins show negative result,” said Dr Jamal.

The EPI representative elucidated that despite positive result in the stool of the five-year-old sibling, the boy had enough immunity because of his older age than his brother, greater resistance and past vaccinations he had received to defeat the virus from getting him crippled.

“The result shows that the deceased boy was a confirmed polio victim bringing the total polio deaths to nine in Sindh,” she said.

The previous victim of the virus from Baldia — a four-month-old girl — had also died a month before the result of her stool samples had arrived.

Officials in the health department are shocked with the frequent polio cases surfaced in the province. They had recorded four cases till the mid of November, but in the space of less than two months five more cases — four in Karachi and another in Kashmore — had been detected.

They said despite maximum attention and continued immunisation campaigns; the situation was not satisfactory in Sindh at all.

One official said it was getting worse “and all our efforts so far proved to be chasing shadows”.

Early this week, a special polio drive to inoculate the children of 78 ‘sensitive’ union councils of the metropolis had been abandoned as the officials denied security because of various other commitments on the top of their priorities.The campaign, known as short interval additional dose of polio drops, was to be launched in the city’s 78 UCs, where security situation had been an issue, has been put off till Jan 20 when a nationwide polio drive has been planned.

There have been increasing refusals in Sindh witnessed particularly during the last year. Most of them came either from Pakhtun families and a few districts, which have witnessed some militant attacks in the recent past.

The last National Immunisation Drive was in November, in which there were 30,231 refusals at the outset, out of which the teams managed to convert 14,589.Last year, total number of polio cases in Pakistan rose to 86 as compared to 58 in 2012; the number of infected districts/towns/tribal agencies/ areas in the country was 20 as compared to 28 the preceding year.

“It is important to mention that 83 per cent of the total polio cases are from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas,” said a UNICEF report.

In Sindh, Karachi is the place with greater concern for the authorities, where too Gadap and Baldia towns are the areas where positive samples were still surfacing.

Another official said the deteriorating law and order situation and persistent strikes and violent protests had made it hugely difficult for the authorities to accomplish the immunisation campaigns on schedule in Karachi.

He feared more children who missed out because of such reasons in the campaigns were at huge risk.

He said the nationwide campaign to inoculate 33 million children in the country, including 2.2 million of Karachi, had been successfully completed elsewhere but Karachi where still many sensitive areas had not been covered.

Polio campaigns had been abruptly ended in Karachi more than once after attacks on a WHO doctor and several polio vaccinators in 2012.

In a botched attack over the police guarding polio teams in Gadap on December 17, 2013 an attacker was killed and another was arrested.

As many as 745 polio cases have been detected during the last 17 years in Sindh, official figures show.

Last year showed the best result for the provincial anti-polio campaigners yet it crippled four children.

According to the WHO, around 10pc of Pakistani children miss out on polio vaccination in nationwide campaigns.