PESHAWAR: The health department has urged parents to ensure immunisation of their children to safeguard them against 12 vaccine-preventable childhood ailments.

The message was circulated by the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) of health department in connection with World Immunisation Week.

EPI director Dr Mohammad Arif Khan said that the immunisation week started on April 24 and would continue till April 30 to highlight the importance of vaccination and create awareness among people.

“This year’s theme of the week is ‘The Big Catch-Up’. It is an opportunity to raise awareness about the urgent and critical need of finding and vaccinating those children, who have missed vaccines that help to protect them from illness, disability and death,” he said.

In addition, this week is meant to emphasise more on immunisation at all levels so that people can be vaccinated simultaneously to improve health and welfare services for everyone.

Every year, the last week of April is celebrated as World Immunisation Week in which vaccination campaign is conducted in the entire province to create awareness among people about the importance and efficacy of vaccination to prevent 12 dangerous diseases.

Dr Arif urged parents to vaccinate their children up to two years of age to protect them against 12 dangerous ailments including tuberculosis, polio, diphtheria, cough, tetanus, meningitis, Hepatitis B, diarrhoea, pneumonia, typhoid, measles and rubella.

Dr Inamullah Khan, the health specialist of Unicef, said in his statement that 60 per cent of children in tribal districts and 49 per cent of children in the rest of the districts did not complete course of vaccination as parents were not aware of the importance of vaccination.

He said that the vaccine was completely safe. He requested the parents to ensure that their children were vaccinated against deadly diseases to secure their future and enable them to live a healthy and happy life.

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2023