KARACHI: Provincial authorities supervising polio operations in Sindh have claimed that they have covered ‘more than half’ of the refusals during the recently concluded polio drive, and yet the number of families who refused to inoculate their children against the crippling disease is more than 7,000, it emerged on Sunday.

The emergency operations centre (EOC) of Sindh issued figures of the province-wide campaign (now concluded) claiming to have covered more than 100pc target – including the children who were not mentioned in the previous calculations.

It said the campaign was conducted in 20 out of 30 districts of Sindh, including six of Karachi. However, it covered 16 out of 18 towns of the metropolis.

Officials said their teams covered 4,973,423 children in the targeted districts, which was one per cent better than the initial target of 4,919,693 children aged five or less.

In Karachi, the lowest coverage areas were Gulshan Town (92pc) and Jamshed Town (94pc).

“[The vaccination coverage in] rest of the towns was all above 95pc,” said an official.

The officials claimed that of the previous 16,000 refusals, they covered more than half by pursuing families of the targeted children through community and field workers. But the number of refusals was still not less than alarming, they added.

“There are still 7,465 refusals that our teams faced during the campaign across the province. We are confident that they would be covered in future campaigns,” said a senior official.

Most of such refusals, an official in the health ministry said, was from Karachi as it had been in the past.

Official figures show that 335,390 children were inoculated against polio in Dadu district, 334,126 in Ghotki, 316,144 in Hyderabad, 220,075 in Jacobabad, 62,715 in Jamshoro, 275,866 in Qamber Shahdadkot, 223,253 in Kashmore, 432,205 in Khairpur, 308,332 in Larkana, 287,977 in Naushahro Feroze, 379,467 in Sanghar, 331,153 in Benazirabad, 248,371 in Shikarpur and 281,142 children in Sukkur district were administered with polio boosters.

Sindh Health Minister Jam Mehtab Dahar stated that in the next phase, another anti-polio campaign would be launched from Oct 28 to 31 in 20 union councils of Karachi’s Gulberg, Liaquatabad, North Karachi, Gulshan and Gadap towns.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2015

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