PESHAWAR, Feb 12: The WHO officials have pledged that polio will be eradicated from Pakistan by December this year. At the same time, they have urged the people to administer polio drops to every child below five years of age to accomplish the task and save the children from becoming paralyzed.

Speaking at a news conference here on Thursday, WHO officials - Dr Khalif Bile Mohamud, Dr MH Wahdan, Dr Elias Durri, Dr Abraham, Dr Saeed Akbar and Dr Quaid Saeed - said the number of polio cases had declined since the launch of the worldwide campaign in 1988.

The world health agency had so far spent $3 billion on the campaign. At the start of the campaign, polio was prevalent among 3,50,000 children of 125 countries, with 1,000 cases being reported every day, said Dr Elias.

"At present, there are only 700 polio-stricken children in only six countries - Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Egypt, Nigeria and Niger - which indicates a 99 per cent success rate," he said.

Health minister Inayatullah Khan said the level of commitment by the government was evident from the fact that a large number of women had been made part of the programme so they could visit households and ensure that no children below the age of five years was left out of vaccination.

According to him, the involvement of religious leaders, women parliamentarians, district governments, education, information and other departments, were the steps taken by the government to strengthen the vaccination drive.

The minister claimed that public awareness had reached its climax as the people had started lodging complaints with him against the vaccinators "for not visiting their homes."

The WHO officials conceded that they were not reaching every child, due to which 32 cases had been detected in the NWFP, but pledged to overcome the shortcomings by adopting unique strategies to administer polio drops to 30 million children in the country.

"The government is doing a remarkable job as far as the anti-polio campaign is concerned, but we are here to add more value and strength to the ongoing efforts," said Dr Elias.

Dr Bile said that it was a challenging and hard task, which needed the cooperation of the media as well. Earlier, the delegation of WHO and Unicef officials met NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani and discussed with him the polio scenario in the province.

Mr Durrani said the government was fully committed to eradicating the crippling ailment. He said that every department had been directed to cooperate with the polio teams. No fault or slackness would be tolerated in this behalf.

He disclosed that police and intelligence departments had been tasked to monitor and evaluate the performance of the vaccination teams in the coming National Immunization Day (NID) round. He also accepted the invitation of the delegation to inaugurate the fourth NID round on March 8.