The IInd five-day polio eradication drive of the year will start all over Punjab, including Rawalpindi from Monday (February 12). The provincial emergency operations centre has constituted over 44 thousand teams which will go door to door to vaccinate over 18.5 million under-five children all over the province, he said.
They include teams constituted for house-to-house visits, conducting vaccination at major bus stands, inter-provincial borders, airports, railway stations as well as hospitals. Minister for Primary and Secondary Healthcare Khawaja Imran Nazir said that the Punjab government wants to build immunity of every child before the polio high-risk season starts in May this year.
"Reaching and vaccinating every child is absolutely critical in order to ensure that no more children suffering from the incurable disease," he said, adding: "We will not relax until polio is eradicated." Punjab has had no polio case in 2016 but with the beginning of 2017 a child was paralysed by the virus in Lodhran, leaving the family devastated.
Eight polio cases have been reported in 2017: one each from Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan while Sindh recorded two and three cases reported in Balochistan. No polio case was reported from FATA in the year 2017.