[DAWN] One-year-old Murad is the latest addition to Pakistain's 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...
count that now stands at 88 reported cases this year, according to official sources.
Murad, son of Nisar Ahmed Khan, was taken to the hospital earlier this month when he was suffering from fever which lasted several days.
The doctor at this small clinic in the Khans' residential area near Gulshan-e-Buner treated the child, but when the fever persisted, the distraught parents took Murad to National Institute of Child Health (NICH), says Town Health Officer for Landhi Dr Siddique.
Once at NICH, the child was treated, and as part of protocol for all children under five, he was tested for the polio virus. When the tests returned positive the Khan family was in disbelief.
Like the other six cases from Sindh -- all from Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
-- Murad also belongs to a Pakhtun household. His family, which hails from Swat, did not however refuse vaccination, they say. In fact, Murad was administered the polio vaccine thee times since birth: once in March, then again in May and the last time in June. Earlier reports suggested that the child's family had refused vaccination, but the family refutes this allegation.
Despite the triple vaccination, Siddique confirms "the onset of the polio virus in the child started on June 6."