KARACHI, Dec 30: The authorities responsible for eradication of polio from Sindh have blamed the nomadic population and the migration caused by the turmoil in the area controlled by the late Akbar Bugti for increase in the polio cases in Sindh.

“Out of eleven cases of polio eight belonged to the Bugti-dominated area,” an official of the provincial health department told Dawn.

According to the official, the eight children were carrying Type-3 of wild polio virus, which was in circulation in Balochistan’s areas bordering Sindh.

“They came to Sindh when their families migrated after the law and order situation aggravated in the turmoil-ridden districts,” said the official.

It is learnt that a significant number of children of that part of Balochistan could not be vaccinated and they remained unvaccinated in Sindh when their families came here.

Another official said one reason for most of those children remained unvaccinated was that they belonged to the nomadic tribes. The nature of these tribes of remaining in the movement causes huge dangers for the health of their children, who could not be properly vaccinated and treated.Besides, the turmoil in those areas had also kept the routine immunization campaign out of the region and some of those children fell victim to the deadly disease.

The authorities detected one more such case this year in which the son of an Afghan refugee who had migrated to Karachi from Bajaur was found to be a polio victim. Similarly, another case is said to have origins in Quetta.

“There is only one genuine case in Sindh which has been detected in Sanghar,” Dr Salma Kausar, project director of Expanded Programme for Immunization (EPI), Sindh, told Dawn.

She said Sindh had a continuous problem of the incidence of polio through migration of people from all directions. “These case are usually detected in families coming from other provinces and Afghanistan,” said Dr Kausar.

She said keeping this in mind and to prevent such incidence in future the EPI had established its centres in all the 29 entry points of Sindh.

“We have established our centres on all the points from where people could enter Sindh by any mode of travel. Now, no child could enter without being vaccinated,” she said.

She said the authorities had detected five polio cases in 2005 and all were of Type-1. Keeping that fact in mind, she said, the authorities had used monovalent vaccines, which is used to counter Type-1. But, this year most of the cases belonged to Type-3.

“We have now decided to use trivalent (for Type-3 polio) vaccine during our next nine rounds to avoid any possibility of occurrence of polio in future,” said Dr Kausar.