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Pakistan started a nationwide vaccination marketing campaign Monday to guard 45 million kids from polio after a surge in new circumstances that has hampered years of efforts to cease the illness in one of many two international locations the place it has by no means been eradicated.
Pakistan commonly launches such campaigns, however violence focusing on the well being employees and police assigned to escort them is frequent. Militants falsely declare the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilise kids.
The marketing campaign is the third this yr and can proceed till Sunday “in response to the alarming improve in polio circumstances”, stated Ayesha Raza Farooq, the prime minister’s adviser for the polio eradication program. “We’re re-energised in our efforts to fight polio,” she stated in an announcement.
Through the door-to-door marketing campaign, kids youthful than 5 can be vaccinated and given drops of vitamin A dietary supplements to reinforce their immunity.
Prime minister Shehbaz Sharif not too long ago met with front-line well being employees, urging them to make sure no little one was left unvaccinated by going door-to-door.
Anwarul Haq, who’s the coordinator of the Nationwide Emergency Operations Centre for Polio Eradication, additionally urged dad and mom to totally cooperate with polio employees. “Polio has no treatment, however it may be prevented with this available vaccine,” he stated.
Pakistan has recorded 41 circumstances throughout 71 districts to this point this yr, Ms Farooq stated. Most had been reported from southwestern Balochistan and southern Sindh province, following by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and jap Punjab province.
The surge in circumstances in new areas is worrying authorities since earlier circumstances had been from the unsettled northwest, bordering Afghanistan, the place the Taliban authorities in September all of a sudden stopped a door-to-door vaccination marketing campaign.
Authorities in Pakistan say the Afghan Taliban’s current choice to cease the door-to-door anti-polio marketing campaign can have repercussions past the Afghan border, as folks from each side continuously journey to one another’s nation. The World Well being Group has confirmed 18 polio circumstances in Afghanistan this yr.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the one two international locations on the earth the place the unfold of polio has by no means been stopped. It is without doubt one of the world’s most infectious illnesses, so it continues to unfold anyplace persons are not totally vaccinated. In extreme circumstances, polio could cause everlasting paralysis and dying.
