PESHAWAR, Dec 2: Speakers at a seminar on Tuesday stressed the need for a public awareness campaign regarding polio to contain the disease’s spread in the province’s high-risk areas.

The one-day advocacy seminar was arranged by the provincial health department in collaboration with the WHO and Unicef to increase the involvement of the local government representatives, MPAs and political agents belonging to the high-risk districts and agencies of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas.

NWFP Assembly Speaker Bakht Jehan Khan underlined the need for concerted efforts in this regard, saying that all children, below the age of five, should be administered polio vaccine.

He also urged the political agents of various Fata units, where three polio cases had been detected so far, to expedite the campaign.

A health official said the Expanded Programme on Immunisation had 341 staff members for Fata areas, including seven tribal agencies and as many Frontier Regions — who were supposed to cover an area of 27,220 square kilometres of very rugged terrain in the face of the non-availability of transport facilities. He added that each of the EPI staff was required to cover a 117 square-kilometre-wide area.

Despite scant resources, the official claimed that they had been vaccinating 705,000 children every year for the seven targeted diseases, whereas 784,000 pregnant women were being administered anti-tetanus vaccine per annum.

He said that Rs120 given as daily remuneration to workers during the National Immunisation Days and Special National Immunisation Days was insufficient for hiring vehicles and in the process, children in inaccessible areas were missed out in the campaign.

An official said that EPI’s Fata directorate will get Rs85 million under the software giant Microsoft’s Bill Gates-funded Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation programme, through which 174 new posts would be created over a period of five years.