The last National Immunisation Drive of the year against polio will start all over Punjab from Monday.
It will be a five-day campaign including two days allocated for catch up to reach the missed children. A total of 16.9 million under five children will be vaccinated during the campaign.
Punjab has deployed over 156,000 polio workers in the campaign including area-in-charges, district and union council supervisors, mobile team, fixed team members and transit team members.
“Government’s continued engagement with the hardworking polio teams has given fruitful results. Punjab has not reported any polio case for over a year now”, EOC coordinator Sundas Irshad, who heads the polio programme in Punjab, said.
“Environmental samples also indicate a positive epidemiological outlook for polio eradication in Pakistan, and Punjab in particular. All environmental samples in Punjab are negative for the last six months”, the EOC coordinator added.
Nationally there has only been one case of wild polio reported this year, compared with 84 at the same time last year.
The programme has achieved similar results in the past, having a low reported case number, but the significant decrease in the virus found in the environment is unique.
