Zubair Qureshi
Members of the National Assembly and the Senate of Pakistan have re-affirmed their support and expressed strong commitment towards making Pakistan polio free.
They were joined at a PILDAT Briefing Session held Tuesday on Polio Emergency in Pakistan.
Welcoming the participants, Mr. Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, President PILDAT said that in these COVID times although our main focus is vaccination against COVID but the Polio situation also cannot be overlooked.
Even though polio cases in Pakistan are on a decline, strong and sustained efforts are needed to completely eradicate the disease.
Parliamentary Secretary Health; Dr. Nausheen Hamid chaired the session. Addressing the session, the Parliamentary secretary said that the number of polio infections has decreased considerably in Pakistan, and there is only one reported case of polio so far from Killa Abdullah in Balochistan.
She said although the polio infections in the humans has decreased in Pakistan but the environmental contaminations are still high.
The environmental samples from Karachi have shown 14% contamination. She said that with the presence of polio virus in the environment we cannot lower our guard as it means that the virus is still around and can infect humans any time.
She stressed the need of making the people aware of the dangers of polio and said that the elected members should make efforts in their constituencies to decrease the refusal rate and should convince people to cooperate with the polio teams and get their children the vaccine whenever the polio team visits them.
She also praised the efforts of the polio workers that have helped in bringing the polio cases down in the country.
In his presentation Dr. Shahzad Baig, Coordinator National Emergency Operation Center, briefed the members of the parliament on the current situation of Polio in Pakistan. He informed the participants that only one case of Polio has been reported so far in 2021.
He said that we are very close to eradicating polio and sustained efforts are needed to completely eradicate polio.
