Staff Reporter
A three-year-old boy in Thatta’s Mirpur Sakhro has been diagnosed with polio in Sindh,
bringing the total for 2019 to 25 cases and Pakistan’s tally to 135.The Emergency Operation Centre for
polio in Sindh confirmed the case. This is not a case from 2020 as the 34-month boy was affected by
polio with weakness in the left upper and lower limbs on Dec 26, 2019. According to his parents, he had
received seven doses of the Oral Polio Vaccine and 3 routine doses plus the IPV were verified by card. An
investigation has been opened into these claims. EOC Sindh’s spokesperson said that the long gap in
door-to-door campaigns during 2019 created a large pool of vulnerable children.The National EOC and
Sindh EOC have started to fight back to eradicate polio and reverse this trend. The first step was the
successful December NID and now areas with recent detections are being targeted in a special response
round starting from Jan 13. “We will follow this up with two NIDs in February and April with another
targeted case response in between,” the spokesperson said. Efforts from December to April will bridge
the immunity gap and lead to a significant decrease in the intensity of virus transmission in the second
half of 2020, they said. Up until this case was detected, Sindh had 24 polio cases in 2019 out of which six
came from Karachi. There were a total of 134 cases that emerged from all over Pakistan: 91 in Kyber
Pakhunkhwa , 24 in Sindh, 11 in Balochistan, 8 in Punjab Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah met the
Provincial Task Force on Polio eradication on Saturday. The meeting was attended by ministers Dr Azra
Pechuho, Syed Nasir Shah, PSCM Sajid Jamal Abro, Karachi Commissioner Iftikhar Shahalwani, LG
Secretary Roshan Shaikh, Health Secretary Zahid Abbasi, all deputy commissioners of the city, all
commissioners and deputy commissioners of other divisions and districts via video link. The details of
the six polio cases detected in Karachi in 2019: Feb 25: A three-year-old from Lyari’s Shahbaig Lane. She
is Baloch and hails from Quetta. April 20: An eight-month-old in Orangi from a Pashtun family Aug 26: A
16-month-old in Orangi from a Punjabi family from Multan April 29: A six-month-old from Gulzar-e-Hijri
from a Pashtun family Oct 24: A 2-year-old at Jacob Lines from a Sindhi family and from Hyderabad Oct
29: A 12-month-old in Keamari from a Baloch family The polio cases detected from other divisions of
the province are: April 17: A three-year-old in Dokri, Larkana from a Seraiki family. She originally
belonged to Gadap, KarachiJuly 20: A one-year-old in Halanaka, Hyderabad, from a Pashtun family who
originally hails from Gadap, Karachi.
