Govt achieves success in anti-Polio drive in FATA: Shehnaz

05 Sep, 2012

 

While talking to BBC, she said that success was the result of one and a half years untiring efforts of the government.

 

Shehnaz Wazir termed this access to far flung tribal areas as a significant achievement. It is for the first time in the country's sixty-year history that FATA kids were vaccinated against Polio and other preventable diseases, she added.

 

She said that Hafiz Gul Bahadur group had vehemently opposed the administration of drops to kids. People in far flung areas were also reluctant to get their children vaccinated owing to illiteracy and conservatism.

 

She said that a group known as Ansar-ul-Islam played a key role in persuading the people in this regard.

 

Shahnaz said the Governor of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Masud Kausar, also played an important role to make this drive successful.

 

Thousands of children in Kurram, Orakzai and Khyber Agencies were accessed, she said.

 

Shehnaz said that it was due to joint efforts by the Civil Administration and Army which helped create awareness among the people of these areas with regard to the utility of Polio vaccination.

 

At least thirty-two thousand six hundred and forty-one kids in Torah Valley were administered Polio drops on 3rd and 4th September, she said.

 

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2012

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