LAHORE: Punjab hit a key milestone on Sunday, wrapping up its third and last national polio immunisation drive of the year.
Polio teams vaccinated thousands of last remaining missed children on the final day of the campaign, to block off any possibility of polio virus circulation in the province.
Punjab has already wrapped up polio campaign in 33 districts of Punjab on Friday except Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad where it was completed on Sunday.
Over 200,000 teams were seen rushing to houses in their respective areas, which were marked as having “not-available’ children.
In a statement issued on Sunday the head of the polio programme and Emergency Operations Centre Coordinator in Punjab Adeel Tasawar reiterated pledge to eradicate polio, saying the commitment shown by the top leadership of the province including Secretary Primary and secondary Healthcare Department Ms Nadia Squib by holding campaign reviews every day, showed that polio eradication was top priority of the government.
He sounded alarm that Punjab’s children were at the risk of imported virus circulation, which could not be allowed at any cost.
He underlined that genomic sequencing results indicated that virus was linked to Afghanistan and other endemic zones. He assured that government and department were planning to stop polio virus transmission by June 2025, and reach zero polio by end-2025.
While announcing to hold review of the campaign under the leadership of Secretary Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department soon, he expressed his acknowledgement for the polio workers saying they played an inspiring role in the national polio campaign.
He noted that leadership was committed to the cause of polio eradication and with the untiring efforts of workers, polio will be eradicated from Pakistan as well as Punjab.
As final data continued to pour in on Sunday, preliminary stats showed that over 23 million children have been vaccinated till the sixth day of the campaign.
Lahore topped the list of most vaccinated children with over 2.2 million children vaccinated till the sixth day of the campaign. The district was followed by Faisalabad and Rahim Yar Khan with over 1.5 million and 1.1 million vaccinations.
The national campaign was launched all over Punjab on October 28 targeting 23.3 million children. The campaign continued for seven days in mega districts including Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad.
While in rest of the districts, the campaign lasted five days.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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