ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday launched a special immunization campaign to mark World Polio Day, which is annually observed on October 24, while asking parents to get their children vaccinated.
At least 20 polio cases have been reported in the country since the beginning of the year which has led to international concern about the deteriorating situation of the disease in Pakistan.
Officials have also expressed fear that more such cases may emerge in flood-affected areas where millions of people have been displaced and it is not easy to access all the families with young children.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries which are battling to prevent the spread of wild poliovirus despite spending millions of dollars on immunization campaigns.
“Special anti-polio campaign started today,” Pakistan Polio Eradication Program announced in a Twitter post. “Polio workers will go door to door in certain districts to administer polio vaccine to children to protect them from the polio virus. Parents should do their duty and go ahead and secure the future of their children.”
It said in another social media post that Pakistan was spending World Polio Day to protect “mothers and children from infectious diseases and provide them with a healthy future.”
Polio is a disabling and life-threatening disease which spreads from person to person and infects spinal cord, causing paralysis.
All polio cases in Pakistan this year have been reported from the country’s northwestern tribal areas where many parents refuse to allow health teams to administer polio drops to their children.
Pakistan’s foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari requested people to allow vaccination teams to do their work, pointing out that eradicating the disease had become a “challenge” to the whole nation.
