SANGHAR/KARACHI: The first case of poliovirus in any part of Sindh other than Karachi was detected in a two-year-old resident of Sanghar on Monday.

All the seven cases confirmed earlier this year in Sindh were detected in Karachi alone.

The latest victim of the poliovirus was Rehmatullah, son of Mohammad Gul Brohi, who hailed from Dad Mohammad Brohi village, near Perumal town, according to Dr Durre Naz Jamal, deputy director of the expanded programme for immunisation in Sindh.

The child’s father said that no ‘proper’ immunisation had been carried out in his village.

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He said he took his son to a doctor at a private hospital in Mirpurkhas after the child’s left leg and right arm turned very weak. The doctor sent a stool sample of the child for examination to Islamabad laboratory which confirmed the detection of the P-1 strain of poliovirus, Dr Alam Azad, a representative of the World Health Organisation in Sanghar, confirmed to Dawn.

After the polio case detection, a WHO team along with focal person of polio in the district Dr Tahir Kalyar and district health officer Dr Gul Hassan Magsi visited the village and collected details from the parents of the polio victim.

District officer Dr Shagufta told Dawn that the child had been immunised, as the family had never been bracketed among the refusal cases. She said a proper investigation was under way to trace as to how the virus emerged there.

Earlier in 2011, a polio case had been reported in Sanghar district.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2014