Summary 1919 teams have been devised to ensure vaccination to every single minor.
LAHORE (Dunya news) – A three-day an-anti polio immunization campaign on Wednesday has been launched in Lahore amid tight security.
As per details, at least six lac children below age five in as many as 74 union councils would be administered polio drops. For this purpose, 1919 teams have been devised to ensure vaccination to every single minor.
On the other hand, the local administration has also asked the parents to take their children for inoculation at nearby health centers.
The Chief Minister of Punjab (CM) Shahbaz Sharif assured that the efforts for the eradication of polio from the province had started bearing fruits. He advised the parents, concerned departments and all the provincial ministers and district Nazims to indulge involvement in the elimination of polio virus from the country.
For the security of polio workers, police personnel and other security officers have been deployed.
Health teams in Pakistan have been attacked repeatedly since the Taliban denounced vaccines as a Western plot to sterilize Muslims and imposed bans on inoculation in June 2012.
There is evidence in tests conducted on sewage samples in some of the country s major cities that the polio virus is starting to spread beyond these isolated pockets and could soon spark fresh polio outbreaks in more densely populated areas.
The virus has been cornered to just a handful of areas in Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the three countries where polio is endemic. Global cases have dropped by more than 99.9 percent in less than three decades, from 350,000 in 1985 to just 223 last year, according to the GPEI.
The World Health Organization says as long as any child remains infected, children everywhere are at risk.
