Sujawal: Health authorities on Tuesday have confirmed two fresh cases of wild polio virus in Sindh taking the total cases to seven in the province this year.
Fresh affected cases belong to Sujawal and Badin districts, Emergency Operation Centre for Polio (EOC) Sindh stated.
A statement from EOC said, “An 18 month baby girl from district Sajawal was diagnosed of polio on 3/11/2016 and both her legs are affected. She had received one polio dose during routine and 6 during the campaign.”
According to independent sources, name of affected child is Safeena.
Other confirmed case belonged to Badin. “An 11 month old baby girl from district Badin was reported to have polio and she had 3 doses of the polio vaccine during routine and 5 during campaigns. Again both legs are involved,” EOC stated.
Name of the girl is said to be Aalam while her date of on set was October 10, 2016.
According to End Polio Pakistan, total cases reported in Pakistan in 2016 are 18. Sindh stands with second highest number of cases with seven cases this year after Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s reported cases are 8 during the same period of time. Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) reported two cases while one cases was reported from Balochistan.
Last year total 54 cases were reported in Pakistan while during 2014, total reported cases were 306.
In response to fresh polio cases, Coordinator EOC Sindh Fayaz Jatoi said these children were immunized.
However he said when polio eradication is near and the virus has only very few places to survive, it travels to areas with lower risk and attacks children with low immunity despite the vaccination.
“Badin and Sujawal were considered non high risk areas for polio but when you are in the end game of polio the virus will find pockets to survive and travel to places where you least expect it,” Jatoi stated.
“No area should be considered safe, we should treat all of Sindh as high risk and put the same amount of concentration to deliver quality campaigns, if we do this, we are no doubt on the brink of polio eradication,” he added.
Meanwhile, fresh four-day anti-polio campaign in all districts of Sindh, except Karachi, will commence today (Wednesday).
During the campaign, a total 6.1 million children under 5 years of age would be administrative polio vaccination.
During the drive, a case response will be conducted in Sajawal, Badin, Tando Muhammad Khan and Thatta districts.
The campaign in 99 union councils of Karachi with a target of 1.5 million children will take place from November 28 to December 04, 2016.
