KARACHI: Pakistan has reported 20 cases of the poliovirus since April, but not a single case has been reported in Sindh in the last two and a half years, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said Monday. All 20 cases along with positive environmental samples have been reported from the southern areas of the country’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Shah made these remarks at the CM House where the inauguration ceremony of the week-long anti-polio campaign from November 28 to December 4 took place. The vaccination drive will take place in eight `very high-risk districts’, including seven districts of Karachi and Hyderabad District. He also met a delegation of the Polio Oversight Board (POB) led by its chairman Dr Christopher Elias.

During the week-long campaign, close to 2.8 million children under the age of five would be vaccinated, Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho told the briefing. More than 27,000 polio workers have been deployed for the campaign.

She said that around 2,943 men and 113 women security personnel have been deployed for the security of vaccine administrators.

An additional 26 senior field staff from other divisions of Sindh were deployed for monitoring and supportive supervision in very high-risk and poor-performing union councils (UCs).

The CM noted that Pakistan was one of two polio-endemic countries in the world along with Afghanistan. “The last Polio case was reported on July 14 from Jacobabad 2020, while in Karachi the last case was reported on June 9 of the same year from Landhi, District Malir.”

Murad added that environmental samples acquired from the area in the last year had tested negative for the virus except in one instance in August this year from Landhi.

The chief executive said that after the first case was reported from North Waziristan in April, Sindh increased vigilance at the entry and exit points of the provincial borders. It vaccinated 128,0495 children out of 30,937 belonging to districts in KP’s south.

“If we continue with the same momentum, we will further see significant results, but we must not get complacent and continue the hard work,” he said. “Children can be saved from diseases like polio through vaccination and we seek every stakeholder’s help to raise awareness for the cause.”

Shah said that efforts in the programme have resulted in more than a 60 percent reduction in refusals and missed children, but we must bring them down further, especially in Karachi.

The POB delegation appreciated the efforts of the Sindh government in eradicating polio. President POB Dr. Christopher Elias said that polio has no cure but can be easily prevented through two polio drops.

At the conclusion of the programme, the CM urged parents to cooperate with the polio teams reaching their doorsteps for vaccination and help save Pakistan’s future by eradicating polio.