KARACHI: The city saw another child in its ‘sensitive suburbs’ contracted with polio making him the seventh case overall this year and first after the travel restrictions were imposed by the World Health Organisation on Pakistan for its staggeringly high contribution to polio cases being detected across the world, officials confirmed on Friday.

Twelve-month-old Murad, son of Nisar Ahmed, a labourer, was a resident of Gulshan-i-Bonair, one of Karachi’s ‘most sensitive’ neighbourhoods, which showed massive resistance to volunteers in polio campaigns.

Officials said the child had been administered polio boosters months ago thrice when the volunteers found no male members, who resisted the campaigns and did not allow the teams to enter their locality.

The family, who belonged to Swat district, had migrated to Karachi after an army operation against militants some years ago.

“The boy contracted polio primarily because of his family’s refusal,” said Dr Zafar Ijaz, executive district officer health, while speaking to Dawn.

“Murad had been inoculated three times months ago when the volunteers found just women in the house but since then he had been denied of the vital immunization,” he added.

He said the child developed traumatic neuritis for some injury and such children turned prone to the crippling disease if were refused vaccination.

An official in the Prime Minister’s Polio Cell said the child’s stool samples had been sent to the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, three weeks ago, from where they got confirmation of the poliovirus on Friday.

An official in the Sindh health department claimed that the health experts had to get police cover to successfully reach the boy’s house to gather required details about the history of his ailment.

Six out of seven ill-fated children belonged to Pashto-speaking families, who have been inflicted with the polio virus, have missed out on the past polio campaigns because of refusal by their families.

Officials in the city and provincial health departments were extremely dejected with the frequency polio cases are being surfaced in a city, which had been polio free in 2012.

Three of the seven cases in Karachi were reported in Gadap alone, while one each belonged to Baldia, Orangi, SITE and Korangi. It was the first case reported from the city’s eastern fringes.

Polio vaccination has attained even more importance in the wake of the travel restrictions imposed by the WHO on the country.

The expanded programme on immunisation is engaged in administering oral polio vaccine (OPV) to international passengers at government hospitals and airports.

Polio workers have repeatedly come under attacks in Gadap town in recent years, compelling the authorities to suspend the immunisation campaigns quite often in Gadap and some other areas of the city.

While the Sindh government initially ordered the law-enforcement agencies to provide security to polio workers during such campaigns, a strategy was later worked out to provide better security to volunteers and ensure maximum coverage during anti-polio campaigns.

On Jan 21, 2014, three polio workers, two of them female, were killed in Qayyumabad. Following the deadly attack, the Sindh government decided that motorcycle riding be banned for eight hours in 24 union councils of the city on Sundays for the safety of the vaccinators participating in anti-polio drive in these areas during these hours.

Since then the special polio campaigns are run in selected areas of the city on Sundays with proper security cover.

The city, which has recorded seven cases in the first half of 2014, had seen eight victims last year.

Pakistan now carries a huge burden of 84 polio cases out of more than 100 worldwide.

Published in Dawn, June 28th , 2014