Pakistan has successfully started a 3 days long anti-polio campaign aiming to vaccinate 40 million children against the virus.
The anti-polio drive was formally inaugurated on Sunday (15 Jan 2023) by the prime minister of Pakistan and the campaign officially begin on Monday in more than 150 districts of the country. The campaign is to be continued till 18th Jan, aiming to vaccinate about 40 million children, under the age of 5, to prevent the life-long disabling disease.
While presiding over the campaign review meeting, the Deputy Commissioner of Islamabad, Irfan Nawaz Memon, appealed to the parents to actively participate in the drive and get their children, under the age of 5, vaccinated with the anti-polio drops.
Previously, 20 polio cases were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2022, making Pakistan among the only two countries left with polio as an endemic, the other one being Afghanistan.
Global Polio Eradication Initiative officially states a country is polio-free if it declares no case of the polio virus for consecutive three years. In regard to this, Pakistan initiated an anti-polio drive in August 2022 but couldn’t continue as devastating floods hit the country.
Now again, the first anti-polio drive of the year 2023 is started in the country, successfully completing the first day of vaccination, and will continue for three days, with the objective to make Pakistan polio-free, officially.