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Polio haunts health workers as 18th case surfaces

KARACHI: With a new case being discovered in Karachi, there are a total of 11 confirmed polio cases this year in Sindh alone and 18 all over the country. This is the third case of polio in the month of July.

The immunization drive from July 28 to July 30 has ended in Sindh, parts of Balochistan, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Punjab. The Sindh health ministry has formed a task force to form polio steering committees at the provincial and district levels.

The latest victim, eight-month-old Qayyum, had been given the oral polio vaccine nine times, three doses during routine immunization and six during immunization drives.

This year, Sindh has reported 11 cases, while in 2005, five polio cases were found and 12 in both 2006 and 2007. It is the five percent of the 6.5 million children under the age of 5 missed during immunization drives that undermine the Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI).

“There are pockets that are never reached, you have to accept that,” said Karachi Civil Hospital Polio Clinic In-charge Mubina Agboatwala.

In June, the media reported that the British High Commission protested the alleged misuse of 15 million pounds (almost US $30 million) assistance by the finance ministry, money which was provided for acquiring polio vaccines.

“It is the migrant population that is missed,” said former Sindh EPI head Salma Kausar Ali. “People from across Pakistan come to Karachi and we keep missing them those always on the move. The polio teams often miss out the nomadic population that comes from the mountains of Balochistan seasonally to earn money.”

As a first step, the health ministry ordered the reactivation of EPI centres at all entry points so that no child enters or leaves the province without vaccination.

However, CHK’s Agboatwala thinks that these excuses have been used too many times and that if this was the case, Balochistan and NWFP should have more cases with so many people crossing the Afghanistan border. In the city, it should be easier to target missed children.

Volunteers have pointed out various issues and it is an open secret that teams are not making house-to-house calls, as they are supposed to, nor is the cold chain mechanism maintained, she said. Strict monitoring is the only solution and without it, all campaigns done and money spent are useless.

One recommendation made at a recent meeting was that only finger marking, done after vaccinating a child, should be considered as proof of vaccination when monitoring.

Agboatwala also said that routine immunization coverage remains dismal, ranging between 30 and 70 percent. Because of this, many children do not receive some or all of their scheduled vaccination doses from the EPI programme. ppi

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