LAHORE: The Punjab Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) has announced that the province will digitalise the data of missed children so that they are followed up and vaccinated in every campaign.

Punjab EOC Coordinator Adeel Tasawwar announced this while presiding over a meeting held here on Friday to review readiness of districts for the upcoming polio eradication campaign starting from October 28 all over Punjab.

In big districts like Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad, the campaign will continue for 7 days, while in the remaining ones it will last five days.

More than 200,000 polio workers will participate in the campaign, targeting 23 million children.

Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of 36 District Health Administrations participated in the meeting via a video link.

During the meeting, the EOC coordinator was briefed on pre-campaign indicators, including training monitoring status and union councils having a large number of missed children.

Mr Adeel was also updated on the stratus of micro plans, as well as composition of the government accountable members in polio teams.

Speaking to the participants, the EOC coordinator said that in addition to one polio case, so far 47 polio environmental samples tested positive in Punjab, raising the positivity ratio to 17 per cent.

“So this campaign will be really challenging as it will be very different from the last national campaign held in February,” the EOC head said, calling upon districts to take on the challenge with enthusiasm and make the drive successful.

Laying out challenges facing the province in polio eradication, the EOC coordinator said Punjab was at the risk of virus importation due to high-risk mobile population.

He stressed the need to focus on mobile and migrant population, ensuring they are mapped, registered and vaccinated.

He directed the districts to maintain liaison with police department to strengthen transit points, calling upon the health officials to make sure that polio teams deployed at transit sites stop every vehicle to vaccinate every child.

The districts have also been told to maintain authentic records of the missed children, he said, adding that the government was planning to digitalise the record of missed and persistently missed children.

He directed the districts to not overburden polio teams by increasing their scope of work in the last two catch-up days of the drive.

He ordered the officials concerned to follow vaccine protocols and to maintain a record of vaccine, including wastage and under-usage, stressing the need to ensure that cold chain of polio vaccine is strictly maintained.

The officials from the districts situated on the inter-provincial boundaries updated the coordinator that they were organising meetings with their counterparts in Balochistan, KP and Sindh to ensure that these areas are well demarcated.

The EOC coordinator said that at the end of the campaign an evaluation will be done in all 36 districts based on missed children and data received on the last day of campaign.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2024