KARACHI: A six-day anti-polio campaign began in the city and 15 other districts of Sindh on Monday as per schedule with no incident of violence reported on its first day, officials said.

They said that the campaign was launched in all Karachi districts — Malir, Korangi, South, West, East and Central — as well as Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana, Shikarpur, Khairpur, Qambar, Jacobabad, Ghotki, Kashmore, Jamshoro, Matiari, Benazirabad, Naushehro Feroze, Dadu and Sanghar.

The exercise, called as sub-national polio supplementary immunisation activities in Sindh, will target 6.790 million children aged five or less with around 2.2m such children in Karachi.

They said 8,089 teams deployed in the six districts of Karachi with 1,884 area in charges and approximately 5,000 policemen for security.

Sources said the deployment of the police guards was better on the first day as around 98 per cent of the deployment had been made.

The campaign has particularly been designed to cover the areas where the authorities have found increase in the number of children who missed previous campaigns for one or another reason.

Earlier, a special campaign was carried out in the 51 union committees falling in all the six districts of the city.

The police hierarchy said they had ordered for best possible security measures to be put in place for the campaign and were pleased to see it was working.

It included deployment of police commandos in most sensitive localities.

Karachi Commissioner Ejaz Ahmed Khan said at a meeting that the campaign was under way in all 188 union committees of the city.

Beefed up police patrolling, snap-checking and advance intelligence collection system will feature during the campaign in its designated neighbourhoods.

The officials said the campaign would particularly focus on the neighbourhoods where people were still refusing to inoculate their children.

Sindh has four polio cases so far this year with one each in Karachi and Jacobabad and two in Shikarpur district. These districts are on top of the government’s polio eradication effort, said the officials.

They said that the campaign was part of a series of drives, which a polio task force for Sindh had planned in a bid to fully eradicate the crippling disease, especially in the city, in least possible time.

A similar campaign for the whole city had been planned last month. Later, it was decided to split the effort in a series of campaigns to effectively make the entire city free from polio virus.

The officials said steps were being taken to ensure that no child got missed during the campaign, for which, closer coordination with the communities would be developed.

They said a fresh micro plan was being prepared, which would give updated picture about all the indicators and figures regarding the next polio campaigns.

An official said the numbers of the children were to be updated as that would ensure that no children born or migrated to the city had gone without receiving a polio booster.

The officials claimed that their past efforts had helped improving the situation in the city, which was evident from the figures and greater assistance by religious personalities and communities in sensitive neighbourhoods.

They said the hardships that they would face earlier in approaching the families who consistently refusing to their requests for inoculating their children had significantly decreased.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2016