ISLAMABAD: Three more polio cases were confirmed by the National Institute of Health on Saturday, raising the number of cases detected during the current month to 174.

An official of the prime minister’s monitoring and coordination cell for polio said one case each had been reported from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan.

Three-year-old Mohsira was found to have symptoms of the onset of paralysis. She is a resident of Doba village in Madakhel union council of KP’s Torghar district.

The child from Fata with polio virus is a 12-month-old girl. She lives at Mali Talab village in Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency.

The third patient is a 12-month-old boy from Killi Popalzai village in Jungle Camp union council, Qila Abdullah Tehsil, Balochistan.

“The parents of the children from KP and Balochistan did not allow health teams to vaccinate their children. But the child from Fata was not vaccinated because no polio eradication campaign has been carried out in tribal areas since June 2012 owing to a ban imposed by the Taliban,” the official said.

This year, he added, 122 cases had been reported from Fata, 30 from KP, 15 from Sindh, five from Balochistan and two from Punjab.

“Every year the count of polio cases is increasing. Fifty-eight cases were reported in 2012 and 93 the year after,” he said.

National Manager, Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), Dr Rana Safdar, told Dawn that because of increasing polio cases, it had been decided to hold a countrywide polio eradication campaign on Sept 29.

“During the three-day drive and two-day catch-up period, 34.5 million children will be vaccinated. A control room will be established at the EPI office to ensure that all high risk areas are covered,” he said.

The control room would be converted into the Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) in October, he said.

The centre is going to be established to satisfy the Independent Monitoring Board which works on behalf of the international donor agencies. On June 2 it recommended that the EOC should be established before July 1.

The EOC will be a body represented by all stakeholders regarding polio which will take immediate and collective decisions.

Published in Dawn, September 28th , 2014