LARKANA, Jan 21: A two-member team of executive district officer (health) of Larkana and UNICEF visited the Phull village, four kilometres from here on Wednesday after reports of a suspected case of polio in the village.

Dr Abdul Sattar Shaikh, district support officer of UNICEF, said that without confirmatory tests the case, a six-year-old girl named Feema, could not be labelled as that of polio. Larkana had been a polio-free district since 2005, he said.

EDO Dr Abdul Fatah Bughio said that he would send a team to the village to assess the case. If the concerned paediatricians proposed to investigate it further then samples would be sent to Islamabad for confirmation, he said.

He said that 28 samples had been sent to Islamabad laboratory from Larkana and all proved negative.

Mohammed Yakoob Phull, Feema’s father, told journalists that as soon as he noticed changes in his daughter’s gait he took her to different doctors who prescribed various medicines and suggested tests.

On Jan 13, he brought her to Dr Saifullah Jamro, a paediatrician, who referred her to orthopaedic surgeon Dr Zameer Ahmed Soomro. He advised certain x-rays, which he could not afford due to poverty, he said.

The girl limped when she walked and her right leg had visibly grown shorter.

The team members asked the father not to go any where neither tell anybody and visit the EDO’s office on Jan 22 for further assessment of the case.

“She has stopped going to school because she cant not cover more stance on foot,” he said. When asked if she had been administered anti-polio drops, he replied in affirmative, saying that just a day before a team visited the village and administered drops to her.

MURDER: One Bakhshal Magsi was shot dead when he returning home to Illyas Panhwar village on the outskirts of Shahdadkot on Wednesday.