HYDERABAD, Jan 20: District Nazim Kanwar Naveed Jamil has directed the district health management to prepare a plan to ensure routine immunization with full coverage of anti-polio campaign so that status of Hyderabad as a polio-free district could be maintained.
Speaking at a meeting of the EPI acceleration committee, he said that though Hyderabad had remained a polio-free district since October 2004 but due to prevalence of the virus in the province, apprehensions among the people of the district had increased and, therefore, foolproof arrangements needed to be made on a war footing. He called upon officials to finalize arrangement for launching a three-day anti-polio campaign starting from January 24.
Mr Kanwar expressed concern over the report presented by the medical superintendent of the Paretabad hospital, Dr Sharif Rathore, for anti-polio campaign that at least 160 refusal cases had been reported only in the City taluka during last two to three rounds of anti-polio campaign and cases were increasing day by day.
The nazim directed for constitution of special task force to ensure administration of polio drops to children upto five years of age with force in case their parents were not convinced by experts and opinion leaders of the area.
He said it had been reported that mostly polio positive cases were reported due to refusal areas in the district as such the practice would be harmful for other children who were taking polio drops regularly.
He asked UC and taluka nazims, NGOs and education community to cooperate with anti-polio teams and ensure that all children upto five years of age were vaccinated.
He also asked them to monitor anti-polio exercise and intimate or get help from management concerned in case teams were not available or some children of their area have been left out.
The nazim maintained that the district government would undertake all possible efforts to root out polio menace from the district.
EDO health Dr Nazar Mohammad Junejo said the district had been divided into 21 zones in which 701 teams including 596 mobiles, 81 fixed and 24 at transit points would vaccinate 297,020 targeted children under five years of age.
He said that though his management and allied organizations were doing their best to cover refusal cases, confidence building measures from religious, social and opinion leaders were required to achieve desired results. Ms Domicina of the WHO said that anti-polio drives were going on at the satisfactory level in Hyderabad district but due to prevalence of polio virus in Balochistan and southern parts of Punjab, we must be careful in Hyderabad.
She said all the entry points of district must be plugged by deploying anti-polio teams there and services of religious and opinion leaders must be ensured to cover refusal cases and maintain the status of Hyderabad as polio-free district.
She lauded the efforts of the district nazim for constituting special task force in this regard.
She said polio virus in Sindh was about to end as there were only four polio positive cases one each in Sanghar and Ghotki and two cases in Larkana reported during the year 2005.
She said hopefully Sindh would get its status of polio-free province during this year subject to full coverage in all districts.