ISLAMABAD: The Central Develop­m­ent Working Party (CDWP) on Wednesday cleared a total of four development projects with a cumulative estimated cost of about Rs136.74 billion including a big foreign funded polio eradication programme following re-emergence of polio cases in North Waziristan.

The meeting of the CDWP presided over by Deputy Chairman Planning Commis­sion Jahanzeb Khan finalised the Emer­gency Plan for Polio Eradication project at an estimated cost of Rs131.996bn and requested the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) to approve its implementation on an urgent basis. The project entails an Asian Development Bank loan of about $799 million to be administered through a consortium of international aid agencies led by World Health Organisation and United Nation’s International Children Emergency Fund (Unicef).

The meeting cleared the Emergency Plan for Polio Eradication project for five years in line with the current National Emer­­gency Action Plan for Polio Eradi­cation 2021-23 and Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) strategy 2022-2026 with a focus on eliminating the Wild Polio Virus and Circulating Vaccine-Derived Polio­virus (CVDPV2) across the country and achieving post-polio certification.

The primary goal of the project is to interrupt wild polio virus type-1 and circulating vaccine derived polio virus type-2 transmission as a path to global polio eradication. The programme plans to limit circulation to core reservoirs and shared transmission corridors and then interrupt all poliovirus within the reservoirs by 2024.

Secretary Health informed the meeting that the project will be executed for five years to eradicate polio from the country. However, he added that recently two cases of polio were reported in North Waziristan which emerged from neighboring Afgha­nistan.

He said that due to porous border polio cases emerged from Afghanistan and that matter was discussed with the Afghan government. Pakistan asked the Afghan government to conduct a door-to-door polio campaign and secure the border in order to avoid further polio cases.

Under the current financial powers, the CDWP can itself approve projects costing no more than Rs10bn while the projects of higher estimated costs are approved by Ecnec once the CDWP clears them on technical grounds.

As such, the CDWP itself approved three development projects with a combined estimated cost of Rs4.75bn. These included re­­placement of Obsolete Equipment and Pro­curement of new Electro-Medical Equip­m­ent for National Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine (NIRM), Islamabad at a cost of Rs524.690 million, Expansion and Up-gra­d­ation of Pakistan Petroleum Core­house for its sustainable operations to facilitate oil and gas exploration research worth Rs819.102m and the establishment of Mohtar­­ma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Medical Col­lege Mirpur at an estimated cost of Rs3.4bn.

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2022