KARACHI: A one-year-old child — 10th in Karachi and 11th in Sindh — was confirmed to be the latest victim of the crippling polio virus in the city’s Landhi area on Tuesday, officials said.

Ahmed, son of Zakir Shah, was one of the children in the country whose samples had been sent to the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad for examination, which confirmed it six weeks after their arrival.

Also read: Seven polio cases detected as year’s toll rises to 115

Officials in the expanded programme on immunisation (EPI) of Sindh said Ahmed’s family lived in Mansehra Colony of Landhi.

They said Ahmed belonged to a Pakhtun family, but it was not confirmed whether he hailed from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

“The parents have informed us that they got the child vaccinated against polio many times in the past — two times during normal campaigns and eight times during special rounds. However, we’ll have to investigate to corroborate whether the parents’ claim is right,” said Dr Durre Naz Jamal, deputy director of the EPI, Sindh.

The officials said that the parents’ claim about their child’s vaccination separated them from a majority of the parents whose refusals led to the crippling of their children.

The lack of vaccination was not the reason for Ahmed’s fate. In fact there are a few polio cases across Pakistan, including Sindh, that were administered at least one dose but have tested positive for polio.

The officials would investigate whether the efficacy of the vaccine was lost due to ineffective cold chain management. Besides, due to limited and/or restricted access in certain areas and failure to regularly conduct immunisation campaigns the immunity against the virus became very low. This mean the virus was circulating in the area and while children were vaccinated their low immunity prevented them from being fully protected. And malnutrition could also weaken the immunity.

Another child confirmed with polio virus was a 16-month-old girl from Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency of Fata.

Most polio cases were primarily caused by the non-administration of polio vaccine either because of the family’s refusal or in Fata where polio volunteers were not able to reach them because of security impediments.

Barring a two-year-old child from a village of the Sanghar district, the rest of 10 polio cases have been reported from Karachi and eight of them belonged to Pakhtun families.

Since June 1 when the World Health Organisation imposed travel restrictions on Pakistan for its staggeringly high contribution to the polio cases in the world, the country has recorded 36 polio cases out of which five were reported from Sindh.

The city — which was polio free in 2012 — had seen eight victims last year and officials fear the number of affected children could be much higher as it is just eighth month of the year.

Four of nine cases in Karachi were reported in Gadap alone, while one each belonged to Baldia, Orangi, SITE, Korangi, North Karachi and Landhi. Apart from Korangi, Landhi and North Karachi all the cases were reported from the city’s western fringes.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2014