The health department is launching a three-day emergency anti-polio...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
vaccination campaign in Jalozai camp and nearby villages to immunise the internally displaced children from highly-endemic Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency
, according to officials."The emergency vaccination drive, to get underway from Monday, has been planned in the wake of red alert issued by the World Health Organisation last week to prevent transmission of the virus to Beautiful Downtown Peshawar and other surrounding areas," they said.
Normally children below five years are administered anti-polio drops but during the emergency campaign vaccine will be administered to people up to 15 years of age in line with the protocol followed during the international health emergency to do away with the risk of any child serving as a carrier for the spread of the crippling poliovirus.
Officials said that the decision to enhance the age limit of target children had worked in Somalia, Chad and Mali where similar step was taken to contain reemergence of poliovirus after those countries were declared polio-free.
The government decided to hold an emergency meeting following a letter from WHO to provincial chief secretary, requesting him to make a plan for the children taking refuge in Jalozai camp owing to military operation in Khyber Agency.
"We are also setting up emergency transit polio checkposts on all routes leading to Bara in response to WHO`s fears that polio situation is getting out of control in Peshawar in particular and the province in general owing to shifting of people from Bara to Jalozai camp," officials added.
They said that the campaign in Jalozai for Bara IDPs had also been suggested to the chief secretary by members of Technical Advisory Group of global polio initiative in a meeting held last month.
"We have recorded 38 polio cases in Bara since 2010. It is a matter of grave concern as it poses serious threat to the worldwide polio eradication efforts," officials said.