HYDERABAD, June 6: Hyderabad Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Nawaz Soho expressing dissatisfaction over the performance of district health department in polio eradication campaign declared union council Hyderabad city (UC-16) union council Qasimabad (UC-1) sensitive for polio coverage is concerned. He said that in union council Latifabad (UC-17), some miscreants had been threatening polio teams and a polio team was even detained at a house for an hour. However, he said, fortunately no untoward incident had occurred so far, adding that police and Rangers had been contacted before start of campaign.

Presiding over a meeting of the polio eradication committee of district in former district nazim secretariat on Thursday, deputy commissioner Soho lamented that coverage figures were not up to the mark. He said that refusal cases were not acceptable and therefore district health officials and other stakeholders would have to give their 100 per cent to improve the situation.

Deputy commissioner Soho called working of district health department’s polio teams as unsatisfactory because the number of unvaccinated children was increasing. He said that the fact that parents were refusing to get their children vaccinated was regrettable, adding that these refusals would negatively impact the children’s future.

The meeting was informed that health officials concerned that 33 cases of polio had been reported across the province in 2011, four in 2012 and two cases have nee reported so far this year. In Hyderabad, two cases had been reported in 2008, one each in 2010 and 2012 but none have been reported so far in 2013. It was stressed that it was incumbent upon the district health officials to make the work of polio teams more effective since polio virus existed here.

Polio coverage in the district is 97 per cent.

Second additional deputy commissioner Abid Saleem Qureshi shared some figures of unvaccinated children in various union councils. He told the meeting that in union council 17 of Latifabad (UC-17) 238 children didn’t even get first dose of polio vaccine while in union council 14 of Latifabad, 191 children had not been vaccinated.

The meeting was informed that there were 147 vaccinators in Hyderabad district and only 19 were deputed in the rural health centres and their performance was not satisfactory because they remained inaccessible due to great distances between villages.