Minister for Health Sindh Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho, Secretary Health Dr Kazim Jatoi, Coordinator Emergency Operation Centre for Polio in Sindh (EOC) Sindh Fayaz Abbasi and EOC Core Team Members inaugurated the polio campaign at EPI hall in Karachi.
The health minister and EOC Members administered polio drops to children and distributed gifts among them. On the occasion the Minister for Health , Sindh said that ‘the polio campaign will continue from 21st to 27th September all across Sindh and appealed to parents to vaccinate their children with two drops of the polio vaccine during every campaign.”
EOC will conduct a province wide Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) campaign in Sindh from the 21 to 27 Sept 2020. The campaign will take place in all 29 districts of Sindh with a total target population of 9,148,355 children under 5 years of age out of which more than 2.2 million children reside in Karachi.
More than 50,000 polio workers will be deployed in the province for house to house vaccination while 5000 personel from law enforcement agencies will provide security cover for this important campaign.
These polio campaigns are of the utmost importance as we must give children the oral polio vaccine to save them from polio and to ensure a healthy future for them, Pakistan is one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with Afghanistan and has so far reported a total of 72 cases of polio out of which 22 cases are from Sindh.
It is absolutely necessary that children receive these life-saving vaccines and also complete their routine immunization.