LAHORE – Sub-national polio campaign which was set to begin by February-end has been converted to National Immunization Days which will be held all over Punjab.
Decision was taken at a meeting chaired by Emergency Operations Cente Coordinator Khizer Afzaal on Tuesday to review the quality of January and November National Immunization Days.
District Health Management Teams of 36 districts of Punjab participated in the meeting via a video link.
Khizer Afzaal said that although no child has been affected by the virus, the circulation of polio virus is expanding which puts children at risk.
Referring to the recent positive polio environmental samples, he said that virus has been detected in new districts. He called for higher focus on districts which are part of Central Pakistan including northern Sindh and Southern Punjab. He highlighted the need to improve quality of campaign and stressed that February campaign was critical in breaking polio virus circulation and save children from the paralyzing disease.
The EOC head expressed concern over higher risk of polio among migrant and priority communities. He appealed to the parents to vaccinate children from polio workers deployed at transit points. He urged districts to learn from past mistakes and ‘do not repeat those mistakes in future’. He called upon district health department heads to own polio campaign, alerting them that statistics gathered from the recent polio eradication campaigns will be presented to highest level provincial leadership including the chief secretary.
Punjab wrapped up its first national immunization drive of the year 2024 on Sunday, achieving a coverage of 96 per cent. This was the second national campaign in the province in two months, held specifically to build pressure on eliminating the polio virus and prevent its importation into the Punjab.
More than 23.13 million children were vaccinated in the province in the November-December NIDs. Where 23.38 million children were vaccinated in the January NIDs.
Punjab has been free of polio cases since 2020, and the last polio case was reported in October 2020 from Layyah. However, a national laboratory has confirmed the presence of polio virus in 3 samples in Punjab in January this year.
