PESHAWAR: The health department is launching a province-wide vaccination drive today (on Thursday) to immunise children below two years against vaccine-preventable childhood ailments.
During the past two years, the routine immunisation has badly been suffered due to the preoccupation of vaccinators with Covid-19. About 20 per cent children missed shots, which they required to stay safe from childhood sicknesses, as the health workers were busy in putting brakes on the coronavirus pandemic.
The director of Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), Dr Mohammad Arif Khan, said that the campaign would continue till November 22 during which children with zero dose and newborns at the union council level would be targeted.
According to him, the workers will visit door-to-door in outreach activities to cover the unvaccinated children and also give jabs to the children as per schedule. Children below five years will receive oral polio vaccine during the 12-day drive.
The drive, beginning today, will continue till Nov 22
“During the past two years, we have been engaged in Covid-19 vaccination to safeguard the recipients against the virus. Now, the cases have come down and it seems that the infection would disappear. So far, we have given first dose to 17.55 million people, second to 16.53 million, first booster to 3.22 million and second to 150,000 people,” he said.
The health department has established more than 1,000 vaccination centres and staff has also been deployed at public places. It was a full-scale activity due to which the vaccinators remained busy and routine immunisation suffered.
“In addition, our staff carried out cholera vaccination in the flood-hit districts of the province in view of the exposure of people due to consumption of contaminated water,” said Dr Arif.
He said that 400,000 people would be given oral cholera vaccine in Kohistan, Tank, Dera Ismail and other districts. These districts have recorded cholera cases. “From October 3 to 15, we ran typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) drive during which children between nine months to 15 years of age were given jabs in the province,” he said.
The campaign was carried out in 22 districts after cases of typhoid were reported. Most of the EPI 3,500 technicians continue to remain engaged in Covid-19 vaccination and anti-polio activities due to which the routine immunisation was likely to dip further.
Dr Arif said that it was decided to strengthen routine immunisation and safeguard children against 12 vaccine-preventable ailments including poliomyelitis.
“For the campaign, we have assigned special duties to EPI workers to continue their outreach activities at the union council level to ensure that the children are immunised,” he said.
He said that their strategy included rationalisation of staff keeping in view of the falling status of routine immunisation to save the situation from further deterioration.
He said that the EPI staffers played important role in all sorts of vaccination due to their experience.
“Now, they would also perform Covid-19 vaccination but at low level because we have already covered those, who wanted coronavirus jabs,” he said.
Dr Arif said that staffers would be deployed in low-performing union councils to reach to the children with zero doses and the defaulters to ensure their safety and enhanced coverage.
“Vaccination is crucial for prevention of diseases and our latest strategy is aimed at continuing Covid-19, polio as well as routine immunisation. The people wanting Covid-19 vaccination can visit our fixed centres,” he said.
Dr Arif said that after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, their workers also visited hotspot areas and collected samples from the suspected people.
Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2022
