MULTAN, Nov 11: Pakistan will not be able to fulfil its international commitment to completely eradicate polio by the end of 2001 as incidence of wild virus of the disease have been recorded in various parts of the country, specially south Punjab.

Sources said that more than 60 polio cases — over 20 in Dera Ghazi Khan and around 40 in Rajanpur districts — have been reported in the DG Khan division of the Punjab while in the war-torn Afghanistan only three such cases have been recorded.

It has been confirmed that 10 patients were affected by wild virus. Laboratory test reports of the remaining patients will confirm either they were hit by wild virus or otherwise.

The figure only included number of patients who were brought to the state-run health facilities. The cases handled by private medical practitioners, general practitioners (GPs), quacks and other traditional healers, hakeems and homoeopaths could not be counted owing to absence of surveillance system.

In view of the concern expressed by the donor agencies, an extraordinary meeting of inter-provincial committee on prevention of diseases was held recently at Dera Ghazi Khan. Representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other donor agencies also participated in the meeting.

A health department official who attended the meeting told Dawn on Sunday that the committee was informed that polio immunization cover in Rajanpur district had been only 20 per cent.

This resulted in the highest number of wild virus incidences, which were around 40 in Rajanpur as compared to the other districts of the Punjab.

A health expert apprehended that the carriers of wild virus polio might migrate to the adjoining districts of Dera Ghazi Khan division, causing more incidences in other areas.

He said failure to achieve universal polio immunization was the result of the sheer negligence on the part of the health department which had little knowledge about the sensitive nature of disease prevention programme. Consequently, the supervisory system of all the preventive programmes had been paralysed in the Punjab.

Therefore, the incidences of six targeted diseases — polio, TB, diphtheria, tetanus, measles and whooping cough — under the Expanded Programme on Immunization were on the increase.

According to him, most officials having vast knowledge and experience of immunization programme had been made officers on special duty (OSDs) for reasons better known to the health authorities.