Pakistan yesterday launched a three-day national anti-polio campaign to vaccinate around 37mn children aged five or below to stamp out the crippling disease by the end of this year, officials said.
Thousands of security personnel – military, paramilitary and police – were escorting over 100,000 teams of vaccinators across the country, said Rana Safdar, national coordinator for the polio eradication programme.
“We hope to reach 95% of kids under five this time,” said Safdar as the drive kicked
started from Monday morning.
Pakistan is among two countries along with Afghanistan where polio – a disease that cripples kids for life – is still an endemic, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The Taliban militants oppose vaccination because they blame it to be a West’s conspiracy to sterilise Muslims.
More than 100 vaccinators working on an immunisation drive funded by the World Health Organisation and security men escorting them have been killed in bomb and gun
attacks since 2012.
Pakistan has made pledges at several international forums that the poliovirus will be eradicated by the end of the year.
The number of infected kids has dropped from 306 in 2014 to only 14 so far this year as the military pushed back militants from the area they previously controlled near Afghan border.
A health worker administers polio vaccine drops to a child during a door-to-door polio campaign in Karachi yesterday.
