ISLAMABAD: The induction of women workers in the polio eradication programme on a permanent basis has brought improvements in the programme because women can better convince mothers to vaccinate their children, Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq, the prime minister’s focal person for polio eradication told Dawn. She said the women workers are also registering children due to which a micro-census is being done.

Senator Farooq on Tuesday made surprise visits to different rural areas in the federal capital to check on the ongoing polio vaccination campaign.

Seven years ago, the performance of Islamabad regarding the polio eradication programme was deemed the best in the country and the health departments of all the provinces were told to learn from Islamabad’s performance, where the last case was reported on Sept 27, 2008.

However, a number of times during the last few years, polio viruses were found in the capital city’s environment samples. Health departments had said this was due to there being no permanent polio staff in the capital and the lack of lady health workers in the programme.

Environmental samples are collected from sewage and the sample is declared positive if a polio virus is found in the water. This indicates that a child or adult in the area may have polio.

Ms Farooq said women have now been hired and trained for the programme and that they participate in every campaign and spend more time on the campaign during the catch up days due to which performance has improved.

“Women workers are registering children under five which means that after every campaign, we have data on how many children were missed. These children are then tracked down during the catch up days. The establishment of mobile teams has also contributed to the improved performance,” she said.

She added that she will continue visiting different areas during the ongoing campaign in order to keep the staff on their toes.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2018