ISLAMABAD: The Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) has approved a $60 million supplementary fund to Pakistan as a further contribution to the polio eradication programme.

This includes a $39m Islamic Development Bank Murabaha and a $21m grant from the IsDB-managed Lives and Livelihoods Fund (LLF). The new financing has been approved by the IsDB Board of Executive Directors at the virtual meeting held in Jeddah chaired by IsDB President Dr Bandar Hajjar early this week.

As the Islamic bank had previously contributed $100m to the same project the new supplementary funding takes its total contribution up to the $160m mark.

In the meantime, the 25th meeting of the Emergency Committee under the International Health Regulations on the international spread of poliovirus held in Geneva has observed that there is still much more work to do to end transmission in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The polio infrastructure that has been developed in Pakistan and Afghanistan has been used to assist with the tracking and tracing as part of the Covid-19 pandemic response.

A statement issued by the IHR Emergency Committee says in Pakistan transmission continues to be widespread as indicated by both acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) surveillance and environmental sampling. WPV1 transmission continues to be widespread, with southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa becoming a new WPV1 reservoir, and some areas such as Karachi and the Quetta block having uninterrupted transmission. There has also been expansion of WPV1 to previously polio-free areas in Sindh and Punjab.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2020