PESHAWAR: The health department is strengthening monitoring to track down the children coming from outside to Peshawar as well as missed ones to vaccinate them and scale up their immunity due to circulation of poliovirus.

The city has in the past detected poliovirus in local children that originated from Fata and Afghanistan. Despite quality vaccination in oral and injectable forms, the threat exists in the shape of positive water sample.

To protect children, health department and district administration have decided to closely monitor children coming from Fata as well as from Punjab that recorded the first polio case of the year.

Peshawar has about 800,000 children of immunisable age including the estimated 25,000, majority of whom couldn’t be vaccinated. The children come as guests and release virus in stool that exposes the local ones to poliovirus.

Monitoring of children coming from Fata and Punjab to be strengthened

Sources said that water samples from Lahore and Rawalpindi were also tested positive for poliovirus. It prompted the health department to monitor children from Punjab. “The virus from Rawalpindi was also found in Islamabad from where Peshawar received sizeable people every day,” they added.

Sources said that health department was surprised over its failure to eradicate virus from Peshawar because the city was frequented by children from all four sides.

Dr Abdul Hameed Afridi, deputy director of expanded programme on immunisation (EPI), told Dawn that water sample had been emerging positive from Shaheen Muslim Town since November last year which was a major concern. “Children risk polio and subsequent disabilities only due to lack of vaccination,” he said.

However, owing to high quality vaccination drives, the immunity level of children had gone up due to which they stayed safe, said Dr Afridi. He added that people coming from polio-endemic areas could transmit the virus to the host communities.

“When thousands unvaccinated Fata’s children arrived in Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan, Tank and Peshawar, we ran special campaign to prevent the infection,” he said.

Dr Afridi said that every child should get two drops of oral polio vaccine in every campaign till five years to stay safe from poliovirus. “Except Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan, poliovirus has been eradicated worldwide using the same vaccine,” he added.

Dr Afridi said that polio case from Punjab didn’t pose any threat to local population as such but Peshawar was one of the three core reservoirs for poliovirus in the country. It required special attention, he said. He added that virus could travel everywhere, therefore, they had to inoculate all children.

“The cases from Lodhran and Gilgit-Baltistan in current years are examples that virus can hit anywhere,” he said.

Official in the district administration said they were working on a plan to devise strategy to locate guest children and facilitate their immunisation. “Already, we have transit points where entrants are being administered vaccine. The focus will also be on missed children,” they said.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2017