KARACHI, Sept 25: Many Pakistani children could be resistant to the vaccine currently being administered to them under the ongoing anti-polio campaign, said the project director of the provincial chapter of Expanded Programme for Immunization (EPI) on Saturday.

Talking to Dawn after a meeting chaired by the adviser on health to the chief minister, during which the new health secretary was introduced to the chiefs of seven projects, Dr Nahid Jamali of the EPI (Sindh) said many children who had been vaccinated repeatedly were yet to develop an immunity against polio.

"In our society, each and every drug encounters some resistance," she said. "That is to say, there is no drug which might make all the people in a population immune against a disease. Zero resistance is practically unheard of."

Ms Jamali, however, stopped short of suggesting that a combination of vaccines should be deployed in the fight against the crippling disease polio. She was of the view that the vaccine which was imported from Italy was quite effective against polio.

"Some rumours have been doing the rounds with regard to the efficacy of the vaccines under use, but we feel that there is no cause for concern."

Chief of the EPI (Sindh) said some newspaper reports were published on the eve of the last National Immunization Days (NIDs), which were baseless and which were not in national interest. "One of these items even said the vaccine was poisonous.

"Nothing could be farther from the truth. The vaccines, both imported and indigenous, cannot be poisonous. On the contrary, the imported ones are very effective against polio."

Ms Jamali said some lots of the indigenously-made vaccines had low titer. "Due to some problems, some batches of the vaccine made by the National Institute of Health had low titer. But this does not mean at all that the vaccines were poisonous."

She was of the opinion that the country had made sufficient progress in the fight against polio.

"Look, five years ago Sindh had about a hundred cases of polio. Last year the number of polio cases in the province had come down to 29. And this year we have had only 14 cases. What is this if not progress?"

She said there was no need to do anything drastic with the system under which the campaign against polio was currently being run. "Why should we change, after all these years, the system which has brought us so close to our goal."

Chief of the EPI (Sindh) said until a few years ago, there were three strains of polio in Sindh. "But now all but one of the strains have been banished from the province."

The next round of vaccinations would take place from Oct 5 to 7, she said. "Preparations are under way and we are trying our best to take our coverage past the 90 per cent mark."

She said the crippling disease was likely to be eradicated from the province either by the end of the year or in the middle of next year.

Ms Jamali said the EPI (Sindh) did not make any purchases. "And we hardly have money because everything we use is provided to us either by the authorities or by the donor agencies."

Elaborating, she said the vaccines were provided by the donors and training was also imparted to the vaccinators by them. "The syringes are provided to us by the federal government."

The vaccinators, she said, were appointed at the district level. "So the EDOs have control over them. But we also monitor their performance, albeit in an indirect manner."