Zubair Qureshi
In a meeting of the Pakistan Medical Association held Saturday, President of PMA Islamabad chapter Mian Abdur Rasheed lauded Director General Health, CDA Dr Hasan Orooj for ensuring vigilance and personal monitoring of the vaccination drive.
The meeting held that Islamabad urban area is faring well not only in M&R campaign, it is also better protected against dengue and Covid-19.
For the last 13 years, Islamabad has been a polio-free city while in Covid-19 vaccination too, Islamabad is far ahead of the rest of the country.
The credit for this goes to Dr Hasan Orooj and his team for achieving a landmark success against Covid-19 and dengue which is three-time less than the rest of the country, the participants of the meeting viewed.
President PMA said “I am a witness that Dr Hasan worked 20 hours a day to protect Islamabad from public health emergencies and that too at the cost of his personal, private family time, etc.”
Meanwhile, Health Directorate of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has targeted over 350,000 children (5 months to 15 years) to be inoculated with Measles & Rubella (M&R) 0vaccine while simultaneously launching anti-polio vaccination drive targeting approximately 120,000 under-5 year kids in Islamabad.
While talking to Pakistan Observer, a senior official of the CDA Health directorate said two types of outreach centres— fixed and mobile—have been constituted for the purpose while CDA health directorate’s social mobilizers are also conducting door-to-door campaign to convince families, shopkeepers, schools and religious seminaries get their children vaccinated.
The health official said there were 235 mobile and 39 fixed centres established at different points where parents of the missed out children could get them vaccinated.
“Our teams are inoculating children in schools, public places, parks, markets wherever they could find a child who has not yet been vaccinated against the M&R,” said he.
Before administering shots, it is verified that the children are not vaccinated at schools or other points, he said.
In total, there are 275 health teams in 20 Union Councils (UCs) in urban Islamabad with 66 first-level supervisors, 275 injectors, 509 social mobilizers and hundreds of other staff to make this Nov 15-27 campaign successful.
Moreover, announcements on microphones and from the mosques are also made to convince the local residents to get their children inoculated during the current drive.
The current M&R campaign is undertaken after three years and the government has set a target of 90 million children across the country to be targeted during the twelve day drive.
About schools that are refusing their students to be inoculated without the consent of their parents, he said there were a number of schools like Lahore Grammar School and International Grammar School that were not letting the teams enter and administer vaccine shots.
However, he said the CDA health teams are constantly in touch with the administration and hopefully will bring them round.
