KARACHI:The Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) for Polio in Sindh will launch a province-wide polio campaign from 30 November to 6 December 2020 as part of the national immunization days.
The polio drops will be administered to approximately nine million children under the five years of age in 29 districts of the province. Out of these, more than two million children reside in Karachi.
The campaign will be conducted following strict WHO recommended COVID prevention protocols which include wearing of masks by workers, their temperatures being checked before deployment, not handling children directly, not entering houses, spending limited time with families, knocking on doors with pens, or elbows rather than hands while reducing the length of meetings and attendance in meetings.
Spokesperson EOC Sindh said they deal with the pandemic, we must also deal with childhood immunization to prevent childhood diseases. “Children can be saved from childhood diseases like polio through vaccination and we seek the media’s help to raise awareness regarding this.”
Pakistan is one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with Afghanistan and has so far reported a total of 81 polio cases in 2020 out of which 22 cases are from Sindh.