QUETTA: There has been a 55 per cent decline in polio cases in Balochistan this year, Coordinator of the Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) Balochistan, Dr Saifur Rehman, claimed on Monday.
He attributed this ‘achievement’ to improvement in the quality of vaccination campaigns.
Addressing a press conference at EOC’s Quetta office, Dr Rehman said arrangements had been completed for a fresh campaign to be launched in 30 districts of the province on Tuesday, with the goal of vaccinating over 2.4 million children under the age of five.
According to Dr Rehman, security arrangements will include deployment of police along with the Balochistan Levies and Frontier Corps.
The three-day campaign will be carried out by 6,603 teams — 786 of them at fixed sites, 321 on transit points and 46 permanent points.
Dr Rehman said the quality of campaigns had improved over the past couple of months and the EOC was closely monitoring the situation.
“The teams are working better near the Pak-Afghan Friendship Gate in Chaman than in previous campaigns,” he said, adding that in 2015, 52 cases of poliovirus had been reported in the world in 2015, of them 39 were in Pakistan and 13 in Afghanistan.
Dr Rehman said that of the six cases in Balochistan — four are in Quetta and one each in Qila Abdullah and Loralai.”
Last year, 15 cases were reported in November. The drop in the number of cases suggested that there was a decline by nearly 50 per cent.
Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2015