RAWALPINDI: In the wake of the positive case of polio in Islamabad and the detection of a positive environmental sample in Attock, an anti-polio campaign will be launched in the garrison city on September 9.
Deputy Commissioner Dr. Hassan Waqar Cheema directed the District Health Authority to ensure the successful execution of the campaign, aiming to immunise over one million children.
Dr. Cheema emphasised focusing on highly sensitive union councils. Special teams have been deployed at entry and exit points of the district, as well as bus and railway stations.
District Health Authority Chief Executive Officer Dr Asif Arbab Niazi said the virus was detected in an environmental sample collected from Attock. He also noted that a polio case in Islamabad had raised alarms for health authorities in Rawalpindi as well.
Dr Niazi explained that a targeted plan had been devised to focus on high-risk union councils. He said Rawalpindi had remained polio-free for the past decade with no cases reported and sewage samples detecting negative last month. However, he said that in May and June, sewage samples had tested positive likely due to Islamabad’s sewage being discharged into Rawalpindi. He stressed the importance of conducting polio campaigns in Islamabad, as the two cities share several bordering areas.
Expressing concern over-vaccination teams’ performance, he said a report would be submitted to the chief secretary to evaluate their efforts.
“If the performance of team incharges is below par, the results in polio campaigns will also be sub-optimal. They need to go to the field to oversee micro-planning and meet their field teams,” he stressed.
He called upon teams to use the oral polio vaccine with the utmost care, minimising wastage to permissible limits and simultaneously ensuring that children were not under-immunised. He directed the teams who were lagging in zero-dose children data entry to ensure that complete data was entered in the application on time. In the anti-polio campaign, the target of vaccinating 1.15 million children under the age of five years is set. For this campaign, 245 union council medical officers and 870 area in-charges have been appointed in the Rawalpindi district.
Additionally, 3,675 mobile teams, 330 fixed points, and 163 transit points have been established. The total number of teams is 4,168 with a target of administering polio drops to 250,000 children on the first day of the campaign.
Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2024
