Anti-polio drive resumes in Pakistan after drop in coronavirus infections

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday resumed its anti-polio vaccination drive for nearly 800,000 children in five districts, four months after suspending the campaign due to the coronavirus outbreak and after reporting a significant drop in the number of COVID-19 infections in the past few weeks.
“Polio Vaccination Campaign begins in selected areas of Pakistan. Cooperate with the teams to ensure adherence to COVID-19 preventive measures and make a healthy and polio-free life for your child a reality,” representatives from the country’s Polio Eradication Program (PEP) tweeted on Monday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) in late March had issued a directive to cancel all anti-polio activities “to avoid placing communities and frontline workers at the risk of contracting COVID-19.”
However, in the first phase of the campaign, officials said they aimed to vaccinate 800,000 children under the age of five from the districts of Faisalabad, Attock, South Waziristan, and parts of Karachi and Quetta.
Earlier in a statement on July 12, Dr. Rana Muhammad Safdar, coordinator of the National Emergency Operations Center at the health ministry’s PEP said: “We are initially aiming to target areas with continuous poliovirus circulation to protect children against the crippling polio disease during this case response.”
Safdar added that polio workers had been trained in COVID-19 protocols and that the anti-polio campaign would be utilized to raise awareness about preventive measures against coronavirus as well.
Polio is endemic in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, with both countries making concerted efforts to eradicate the problem.
According to data provided by the PEP, 58 polio cases have been reported across Pakistan’s provinces since the beginning of the year, with 21 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 20 in Sindh, 14 in Balochistan, and three in Punjab.