PESHAWAR, Jan 12: The NWFP health department is facing problems in anti-polio campaign in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas due to security reasons. “We are facing problems in reaching to all children in tribal areas due to which new cases are emerging,” said health secretary Abdul Samad Khan.

Speaking at a news conference on Friday ahead of the three-day anti-polio vaccination drive starting from January 16, he said that polio was an entirely vaccine-preventable disease and there was an urgent need that all children below the age of five years should get vaccinated to do away with the crippling ailment once and for all.

He said the NWFP and Fata recorded the highest number (15) cases of the total 39 in the country in the 2006 year.

Paediatrician Prof Liaqat Ali set aside the impression that polio drops were impregnated with estrogens that could harm potency and fertility.

He said that it was a telltale sign of the success of polio vaccines that no polio case had been reported of the total 150,000 children admitted to the hospital’s paediatric ward in the 2006 year.

“In eighties, we admitted two cases on average every day,” he said and added that oral polio vaccines (OPVs) had done wonders, because the other vaccine-preventable diseases still haunted the children.

Dr Abdul Jabbar of the WHO said that the number of polio endemic districts and agencies had come down from 22 to only seven, saying that 99 per cent of polio-affected were below the age of two years.

“It is a big challenge to eliminate the disease,” he said.

Dr Waheed Khan of the EPI said that about six million children would be vaccinated in the coming anti-polio campaign.

He said that the health department was facing an uphill task of going inside the houses due to shortage of female vaccinators.

He said that the WHO spent Rs22million on every polio campaign, besides Rs34million by Unicef for training and capacity building of the staff.

Dr Jalilur Rehman said that OPVs had been administered to 10 billion children across the globe so far and no stance where the OPVs had caused impotency or infertility.

He said the vaccines were procured through highly-skilled technical agencies, which had certification international quality standard of the WHO.

Replying to a question that many children had developed the disease despite having had the vaccines, he said that sometime recipients had low-immunity or suffered diarrhoea and dysentery that rendered drops ineffective.

However, he said that every child must receive at least 10 doses to be safe from the disease.