KARACHI, Nov 5: An estimated 8.4 million children, under the age of five, will be administered polio drops in the province during the three-day anti-polio campaign starting all over the country from Tuesday.

Besides, children over six months of age will be given vitamin A supplementation drops, as part of the government’s drive to fight vitamin A deficiency (VAD) among children.

As VAD is widely prevalent among the cross-section of the population, especially children, the Vitamin A supplementation has been integrated with the National Polio Immunization Programme.

The World Health Organization has classified Pakistan as a country with severe sub-clinical Vitamin A deficiency, calling it a significant public health problem and more so among the pre- schoolers. Improving Vitamin A level can reduce mortality by 23 per cent, deaths due to diarrhoea by 40 per cent and due to measles by 50 per cent.

If the VAD is eliminated in Pakistan, every year 66,000 lives can be saved and 16,000 cases of nutritional blindness can be prevented.

Project director, EPI Sindh, Dr Shamsun Nisa Ansari, said that more than 18,000 mobile teams would go door-to-door to ensure maximum coverage for polio vaccine and Vitamin A supplementation in the province.

In Karachi, about 2.6 million under-five population will be provided polio and Vitamin A drops with the help of 5,000 mobile vaccination teams.

Dr Ansari said polio vaccination camps would also be set up on airports, railway stations, bus stops and on the roadsides for public convenience.

She said that last year 200 polio cases had been detected all over the country, with 65 cases reported in Sindh. This year the number has declined to 69, with 20 new cases in the province.

Meanwhile, paediatricians have strongly dispelled the impression that repeated dosage of polio vaccines could have any adverse effect on children, reports APP.

The special campaigns offer children a chance of herd immunity against the crippling disease, they said. It also helps combating wild polio virus and getting it replaced with vaccine virus, if pursued consistently.

Prof Abdul Ghaffar Billoo said there have always been chances of polio virus detection among the already immunized children, lest a zero level polio virus target is attained and maintained for a considerable period of time.

He warned the parents, particularly those belonging to the upper strata of the society, overwhelmed with a false sense of security as their children had been vaccinated against the virus, at one or the other point of time, in any of the reputed private sector hospitals.

According to him, these parents, feeling little need for any booster during a government sponsored campaign or at any public sector outlet, are unconsciously exposing their children as well as all other children to a high risk situation.

It may be pointed out that children inflicted with flaccid paralysis, due to insignificant manifestations, are often overlooked while they continue excreting.