Karachi:Minister for Health and Population Welfare Dr. Azra Fazal Pechuho chaired the review meeting for the Polio Drive that took place in District West and District Central of Karachi from 20th July 2020 to 26th July 2020.
The meeting was attended by EOC Sindh Coordinator Fayyaz Abbasi, Technical Focal Person Polio Dr Ahmed Ali Shaikh, Deputy Commissioners of all 6 districts in Karachi, DHOs of all Districts of Karachi, UN partners and other officials.
During the meeting, the minister was given an overview of the campaign. She was briefed that the campaign was conducted in 23 UCs with the target of 260,742 children under the age of five and more than 80% of the target was achieved.
The total still refusals of this campaign were 18000 after catch-up was completed. It may be noted that the recorded refusals were above 38,000 but polio teams on Saturday and Sunday despite the heavy rains put an extra effort involving local influencers and covered almost 20,000 refusals bringing the figure down to 18,700 at the end of the seven-day campaign.
Dr Azra Pechuho said: “This campaign being the first one after COVID-19 was a huge task following the pandemic. I firstly commend the teams carrying out this campaign and the communities for stepping forward to vaccinate their children. Recorded refusals were 38,000 and the teams brought them down to 18,700, this is a start and in August we will have a wider campaign. We covered 80.1 percent if the target and we need to increase our efforts in the next round to take this above 90 percent.” The next campaign for polio is scheduled to start mid of August for all of Sindh.