LAHORE: A three-day polio campaign starts from Monday (today) across the province like the rest of the country.

A spokesman for the Punjab Health Department said the total number of target children in the province was over 17.5m while the number of union councils (UCs) where campaign was being held was 3,511. He said 39,900 teams would carry out door-to-door vaccination and they would be supervised by over 7,000 area in charges. Special emphasis would be laid on vaccinating the population on the move at permanent transit points of the province, he said in a handout.

As many as 166 police cases had surfaced, so far, this year as compared to 41 in 2013, however, the number of infected districts had reduced from 21 in 2013 to 15 in 2014, the spokesman said. Quoting one of the causes of the polio spread, he said most of the population displaced by the operation in North Waziristan had moved to the settled areas across the country instead of refugee camps.

Published in Dawn, September 29th , 2014