Over 33 million Pakistani children to be vaccinated against polio in 4-day drive

Over 33 million children in Pakistan will be administered with polio vaccine during a four-day campaign from Monday to Thursday, according to the Dawn. This will cover a majority of the 7.5 million children in Pakistan's Sindh province.

Zafar Ijaz, director for the Karachi Health division, said arrangements to provide security to more than 6,000 teams in Karachi have been taken. Stringent security measures are in place in volatile areas like Gadap and Baldia towns, where polio workers and doctors have been attacked several times in the past. Polio campaigns have abruptly ended in Karachi more than once after attacks on a World Health Organisation (WHO) doctor and several polio vaccinators have occurred over the years.

Karachi is the city where health officials have recorded most refusals to the immunisation campaign in the country. Almost all refusals came from the growing Pakhtun population in the metropolis. As many as 761 polio cases have been detected over the past 17 years in Sindh, official figures show.

The National Immunisation Drives were started in 1994 to eradicate the lethal disease. Last year, the disease crippled 10 children in Sindh. Since June 1, when WHO imposed travel restrictions on Pakistan for its staggeringly high contribution to polio cases in the world, the country has recorded 93 polio cases, of which nine were reported in Sindh.

Pakistan now carries a huge burden of 174 polio cases: 121 from Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), 31 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 15 from Sindh and five from Balochistan.