LAHORE: Vaccination of children against polio continued on last day of the polio eradication drive in remaining two districts of Punjab on Sunday.
The teams continued to visit house-to-house to vaccinate children in mega districts of Lahore and Faisalabad.
Punjab Emergency Operations Centre (PEOC) has deployed officials to monitor the campaign who remained deployed in the field on Sunday to oversee implementation of the campaign.
So far, in six days more than 4.7 million children have been vaccinated in five districts including Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan, Sheikhupura and Mianwali. The drive was launched in the wake of positive environmental samples in Lahore in January this year.
In Lahore and Faisalabad alone, more than 3.5 million children have been vaccinated in the drive. While over 2 million children have been vaccinated in Lahore, 1.5 million children have been vaccinated in Faisalabad.
The campaign continued for seven days in the mega districts of Lahore and Faisalabad. In rest of the three districts campaign was wrapped up on Friday.
In Multan over 0.8 million children were vaccinated in the five-day drive. In Sheikhupura 0.24 million and in Mianwali more than three thousand children were vaccinated in the campaign.
During the campaign, the head of the polio programme in Punjab travelled to Sheikhupura to monitor polio campaign. During his day-long mission he visited a fixed site in Sharaqpur Khurd and met with polio teams as well as supervisors.
The EOC head also visited a nomadic settlement and checked status of vaccination. The Punjab polio programme head checked marked fingers of children to ensure that all children are vaccinated.
Speaking to the polio teams, Khizer Afzaal reiterated that workers needed to focus on high-risk mobile communities so that no child was missed. “Environmental samples in Lahore have tested positive. Considering the large-scale population movement between Lahore and Sheikhupura, the teams need to be alert and focus their energies on vaccination of children belonging to mobile communities who are vulnerable and at the same potential virus carriers”, underlined the EOC coordinator. He also called upon polio teams to stay alert on transit points.
During the visit Khizer Afzaal checked status of vaccine stored in the cold chain equipment. He instructed the teams to avoid vaccine wastage. At the same time, the EOC head added, that children should not be under-immunized as this could make the entire vaccination exercise futile. He also checked the
The Punjab EOC further stressed that considering the virus circulation, everyone involved in campaign needed to make sure that campaign quality was not compromised.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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