NEOC notifies two polio cases of 2018 in Bajaur

PESHAWAR: National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) notified two polio cases of 2018 from tribal district Bajaur.

National Institute of Health has isolated wild polio virus from stool sample of 36 months boy Abdur Rehman and 78 months girl Nabila, both of them are residents of village Jaba Manzai, Union Council Tali, Tehsil Salarzai of district Bajaur said the spokesman on Saturday.

When child got paralyzed because of polio virus was December 29, 2018 and December 31, 2018, whereas, stool sample were collected to check the presence of polio virus on Jan 8, 2019 and Jan 7, 2019 from Abdur Rehman and Nabila respectively.

Laboratory isolated wild polio virus from stools and confirmed both to be the polio cases which were notified by NEOC today on January 19, 2019.

Both the children received more than seven doses of oral polio vaccine and zero doses of essential and routine vaccination.

Both the children shows slight weakness in one of the limbs or slight paralysis.

Coordinator EOC Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Capt (R) Kamran Ahmed Afridi said every confirmed polio case from Bajaur is proof in itself that gap exists and there is need for improving the quality of campaign.

He said task teams have already been notified who should identify gaps and propose the strategy to recover.

He advised provincial team to ensure access to and vaccination of each and every child especially in Bajaur during upcoming anti polio campaign.

He said any delinquency on the part of any officer will be dealt strictly.

In tribal districts, three days campaign will be launched from 21 to 23 January followed by catch up of missed children and surveillance, under the supervision and security provided by Deputy Commissioners, District Health Officers and Security Forces.

For this purpose, total of 4120 teams comprising 3803 mobile teams, 227 fixed and 90 transit teams mobile teams have assigned with focus on reaching and vaccinating total of 884771 children below the age of five years.

EOC Coordinator said all the necessary arrangements should be ensured for high quality and effective anti-polio campaign that could set a benchmark for rest of the 2019 campaigns.

He said it is important that we strive to boost immunity of every child against polio virus and simultaneously aim to prevent virus from movement.

With this, another couple of polio cases emerged thereby increasing the cases to six in tribal districts during 2018 in which five polio cases emerged in Bajaur and one polio case in district Khyber.