Wisal Yousafzai
PESHAWAR: Secretary Health Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Abid Majeed has said the that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and health department along with the Afghan delegation has decide to hold polio campaign across both the countries that the miss children should be covered during the Pak-Afghan border.
He said that Pakistan and Afghanistan were the same epidemiological block and the decision to conduct same day campaigns with Afghanistan will not minimize chances of missed children who were on the move but will also address the issue of virus transmission in the region.
Abid Majeed said this while inaugurating special Inactivated Polio Vaccination campaign (IPV) here at Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar on Saturday.
EOC Coordinator KP Atif Rehman, Coordinator EPI Dr Shafiq, Deputy DHO Peshawar, Dr Ikhtiyar Ali, Director LRH Dr Khalid Masood, representative Pediatric Association Dr Sabir Khan, Team Leader UNICEF Dr Joahar and Technical Focal Person BMGF Dr Imtiaz Ali Shah were present.
Secretary Health informed that the special IPV campaign will continue in district Peshawar from April 23 to April 30, 2018 wherein more than two million children will be vaccinated with IPV whereas oral polio vaccine will also be given to children to safeguard them against polio and stop virus circulation in the district.
He said that polio transmission has been stopped using the same IPV and OPV combination in the world and we are doing the same here.
In reply to a query regarding hand shake intervention, Abid Majeed said that teams from both FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa shake hands in the morning and start vaccination in their respective areas to ensure that no child was missed in the bordering areas between the settled and the tribal belt.
Speaking on the occasion, EOC coordinator Atif Rehman said that polio eradication was the high priority of the government and IPV campaign was part of the efforts to stop virus transmission in the region.
He said that IPV campaign will start from April 23 and will continue till April 30, 2018 during which 2,28173 children will be immunized with Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) between the age group of 4 to 23 months whereas around 2,63 571 children from zero to 23 months will be given OPV .
Rehman said that the vaccination will be carried out at the already identified outreach sites and trained teams will also visit houses to ensure inoculation of target children.
He said that special security measures have been taken to ensure security to teams and more than 2000 polio personnel will be deployed at various points while around 1,540 Social Mobilizer while 770 different team will visit every house to vaccinate children for the IPV campaign while 941 train forces and 941 assistant will perform their duty in the campaign.
He added that IPV strengthens immunity of children but OPV was still required for polio eradication and the routine campaigns will therefore continue in the province until the virus transmission stops.
He added and informed that the decision of IPV was taken because continuously the water sample result for polio in Peshawar from two places including Shaheen Muslim Town and Larama area were positive at Peshawar.
Atif added that in the first phase they were targeted Peshawar in IPV while later they will expand the IPV campaign to other high risk areas of KP including Upper Dir, Lower Dir, Charsadda , Mardan and Nowshera.
On a quarry that is Polio will end in Pakistan in 2018 he reply that the government first priority is to end polio across Pakistan and for this purpose they were working day and night to save the up coming generation from the crippling disease of polio.
Dr Sabir Khan, representative PPA provincial chapter shed light on the significance of IPV saying that it was injectable vaccine which was safe and builds individual immunity of a child that protects him from lifelong paralysis.
