Pakistan - No let-up in polio cases

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Re: Pakistan - No let-up in polio cases

Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=180138

4 polio cases reported in IDPs? kids: Jakhrani
Friday, May 29, 2009

Islamabad

Minister for Health Mir Aijaz Hussain Jakhrani here Thursday said that four polio cases have been reported among children living in relief camps, set up for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in NWFP.

?The main cause behind the increasing polio cases in children of the affected areas is no access of health teams in affected areas for the last two years in Swat and adjacent areas,? the minister said while addressing a press conference.

He, however, said that teams of all national programmes are ready to rush to the affected areas after completion of the on-going operation to start routine health services for the population.

He said the teams would not only administer polio drops but also start other national level health programmes including TB control programme, mother and child healthcare programme and vaccination against diseases.

He said the government is working hard to ensure that all children in IDPs camps and those living in host communities are reached with lifesaving vaccines for polio, measles and other diseases.

He said that over 500,000 children in the IDPs relief camps would be administered anti-polio drops while one million children living in five districts of NWFP, namely Peshawar, Mardan, Swabi, Charsadda and Nowshera, would also be administered drops.

He said more than 86,744 polio teams would conduct house-to-house visits to vaccinate over 33 million children with the oral polio vaccine and would also provide vitamin A drops to children from six months to five years of age.

He said Vitamin A not only builds resistance against different diseases, but also helps reduce the harmful effects of diseases like measles and diarrhoea, and protects the eyesight.

 

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Re: Pakistan - No let-up in polio cases

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkiMxbHNH0BqgpWA2ZG6VD6wVTmAD9AJ67080

Pakistan resumes polio vaccines halted by Taliban

By ASIF SHAHZAD (AP) ? 44 minutes ago

ISLAMABAD ? Authorities in Pakistan's Swat Valley have resumed vaccinating children for polio, a practice the Taliban had banned as un-Islamic before they were beaten back by an army offensive.

The last inoculations were administered nearly a year ago, an official said Tuesday.

The Islamist militants, who began taking over the valley in 2007, had declared a campaign to vaccinate against the potentially crippling disease was un-Islamic because it was foreign-funded. Swat Taliban leader Maulana Fazullah said the vaccinations were a Western conspiracy to make Muslim children infertile.

The army says it has killed more than 1,800 suspected militants in Swat since launching its latest offensive there four months ago. The government is now trying to bring the valley back to normal. Most of the 2 million people displaced in the offensive have returned home.

Government official Khurshid Khan, a doctor, said six cases of polio have been discovered since vaccinations resumed Monday. Some 215,000 children are a target of the three-day campaign, said Khan.

He said Pakistani health officials had to quit their campaign last September after several attacks by the militants. The department made another attempt to restart in January, but that was quickly abandoned after another attack.

"Our staff was beaten and our equipment was snatched," Khan told The Associated Press.

Swat resident Yar Mohammad said the people of the valley welcomed the resumption of the campaign.

"The militants have been depriving our children of our basic right. It is our national responsibility to secure our kids against all diseases," said Mohammad, who lives in the valley's main city, Mingora.

Polio has been eradicated in most countries. But in Pakistan, Nigeria, Afghanistan and India it remains "endemic," according to the World Health Organization.

The disease mostly strikes children under age 5 and is spread when people come into contact with the feces of those with the virus. It usually attacks the nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and sometimes death.

Pakistan still faces threats from Taliban fighters and other militant groups throughout its northwest.

It is waging an ongoing offensive in the Khyber tribal region, where the military said Tuesday that it had killed 24 more insurgents ? a toll that could not be independently verified. The military has reported killing scores of militants in the region in the past week.

In the Orakzai tribal region, suspected militants killed four high school students, officials and a resident said.

Government official Mohammad Yasin could only confirm that gunmen fired on students in the Kalaya village area. However, the resident, Yousuf Mohammad, said he saw masked gunmen kill four boys. Others were wounded.

The children were Shiite Muslims, an intelligence official said. He said their tribe was fighting a gunbattle with the militants. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information to media.

Orakzai is the main base for new Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, but no group has claimed credit for Tuesday's attack.

Also Tuesday, trucks carrying supplies to U.S. and NATO troops in neighboring Afghanistan were attacked in two areas of Pakistan.

Three people were wounded by gunmen who attacked trucks on the outskirts of the main northwestern city of Peshawar, police official Ali Waqar said.

In the southwest city of Quetta, two NATO oil tankers caught fire and were completely gutted. Three more were partially damaged, police official Khalil Bugti said. He said someone fired shots at one of the tankers, sparking the blaze.

He said he would not speculate on whether it was the work of militants.

Associated Press writers Hussain Afzal in Parachinar, Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Abdul Sattar in Quetta and Matiullah Achakzai in Chaman contributed to this report.

 

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Re: Pakistan - No let-up in polio cases

Source: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect...rs-to-play-key-role-in-anti-polio-drive-am-02

Lady health workers to play key role in anti-polio drive
By Mukhtar Alam
Tuesday, 08 Sep, 2009 | 11:29 AM PST |

KARACHI: Sindh health authorities have decided to ensure maximum participation of lady health workers in routine immunisation and supplementary oral anti-polio vaccines drives, including the three-day activities launched on Monday to mop up the deadly virus.

Sources privy to the polio eradication activities in the province said that the health authorities considered lady health workers more effective than their male colleagues in the polio immunisation campaigns after the latest detection of a polio case.

Following the detection, Sindh Health Secretary Syed Hashim Raza Zaidi and senior officials of the expanded programme on immunisation visited Tando Allahyar district where they were informed that eight-month-old Mohammad Siddique Buzdar had onset of paralysis on August 14. The child had received no oral polio vaccine in any of the routine immunisation programme and supplementary vaccination campaigns. The child?s family had been refusing vaccination teams reaching out to them for supplementary administration of polio doses, maintaining that they had no child less than five years, said Dr Mazhar Khamesani, the manager of the provincial immunisation programme.

He confirmed that the health secretary had asked officials concerned to ensure maximum participation of lady health workers in polio campaigns, as they could play a very effective role, like they did in the case of child Buzdar. He added that the secretary had warned the lady health workers not getting involved in the immunisation activities of severe disciplinary action, including termination of jobs.

The Sindh Expanded Programme for Immunisation has planned special immunisation activities for 10 select districts following the detection of recent cases. The mono-valent OPV-1 will be administered to deserving children up to the age of five in Tando Allahyar, Matiari, Hyderabad, Naushero Feroz, Sanghar, Shikarpur, Sukkur, Ghotki, Kambar and Larkana districts between Sept 7 and 9.

Sources in the National Expanded Programme on Immunisation said that M.S. Buzdar ?the second type-1 case from Tando Allahyar district this year? had not received oral polio vaccine during routine immunisation programme and special polio vaccination campaigns. Earlier, a polio type-1 case in the district was reported in May.

The Dad Jawar union council of Chamber Tehsil, where the latest victim of polio resides, was covered under the national immunisation days by a team of male health workers until July. A mark on the child?s place of residence indicated that there lived no child less than five years of age. However, when lady health workers visited the area, not only did they detect the case but also administered vaccines to the child.

The union council had less than 90 per cent immunisation coverage, verified by finger-marking in July and August campaigns, a source said. It was pointed out that of the 17 campaigns conducted in the district since January 2008, 15 had vaccines with a component against the type-1 poliovirus.Following the detection of polio case in the mid of August, the national manager of expanded programme for immunisation in a report recommended to the provincial health authorities concerned to alert the district authorities to ensure deployment of culturally appropriate vaccination staff in all areas to guarantee vaccination of every child through routine immunisation and vaccination campaigns.

Overall cases

There were 45 confirmed polio cases, including 27 type-1, 17 type-3 and one case a mixture of both serotypes, in the country till August 27. Among the 27 type-1 cases seven were reported in Punjab, seven in Sindh, four in Fata, six in the NWFP and three in Balochistan. The 17 type-3 cases include nine children detected with the virus in FATA, three in the NWFP, three in Sindh, one each in Punjab and Balochistan, while a case detected as a mixture of type-1 and type-3 virus was reported in Bajaur Agency of Fata.

This way the total number of districts where the poliovirus was reported stood at 24 in the country till the end of August.

Among the confirmed polio cases reported in Sindh, four were detected in Karachi (two in Baldia and one each in Gadap and Gulshan-i-Iqbal); one in Kambar, two in Tando Allahyar, one in Naushero Feroze, one in Sanghar and one in Shikarpur.

 

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Re: Pakistan - No let-up in polio cases

Source: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\09\09\story_9-9-2009_pg7_10

Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Six polio cases reported in Swat

MINGORA: Six polio cases have been reported in the Swat valley since vaccinations resumed on Monday, a health official told Daily Times on Tuesday. He said the disease was on the rise in the district as children had not been administered polio vaccines for the past two years. On Sunday, local health officials found the polio virus in a nine-month-old child in Kanju area of Swat. The Taliban had declared vaccinating children against the potentially crippling disease un-Islamic. ghulam farooq

 

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Re: Pakistan - No let-up in polio cases

PAKISTAN: Polio eradicators target people on the move
08 Sep 2009 12:21:28 GMT
Source: IRIN
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.
KARACHI, 8 September 2009 (IRIN) - Population movements within Pakistan and between Afghanistan and Pakistan pose serious challenges to those trying to eradicate polio, but efforts are under way to tackle the problem, according to officials.

Many people have relatives in Afghanistan and travel between the two countries is common. Over the past few months some two million people have been displaced by fighting in northwestern Pakistan, and the big cities have long attracted people looking for work.

Karachi, the southern port city of some 20 million people, houses a large population of ethnic Pashtuns, with roots in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) or Afghanistan.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are among four countries in the world where polio is still considered endemic. Forty-five cases have been reported in Pakistan so far this year, 117 in 2008, and 32 in 2007. The trend appears to be upwards, say experts.

"Mobility of populations is a challenge," Melissa Corkum, a UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) programme communication specialist, told IRIN.

She said border immunization points had been set up along the Pakistan-Afghan border to try to stem the spread of the virus.

"Viruses can be tracked genetically. A virus from Karachi has in the past shown up in Afghanistan," she said.

Recent population displacements in northwestern Pakistan have hampered immunization efforts: "This is the first time my youngest child, aged 10 months, was vaccinated against polio," said Muhamad Fazal, an internally displaced person (IDP) from NWFP's Swat District who is currently staying with relatives in Karachi.

Vaccination drives have been disrupted by militants in Swat in the past year, but Fazal hopes it will be possible for his three children to receive polio drops regularly when they return to their village near the town of Saidu Sharif "in a few days' time".

"Techniques have been developed to track IDPs when they return, and also for other populations on the move such as nomads in Thal [southern Punjab]," Corkum said.

Police involved

Road traffic police have also been helping: Last month, a three-day polio immunization campaign was conducted in Karachi at points on the main roads leading to Kot Sabzal, over 600km to the north.

Hundreds of children under five were immunized during the campaign, police said.

Deputy inspector-general of motorway police Daftab Ahmed Pathan said: "This is a challenge we have taken up."

Children travelling on highways have been targeted by police elsewhere in the country since early 2008 in a bid to stem the disease.

 

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Re: Pakistan - No let-up in polio cases

Source: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86560

Tuesday 13 October 2009

PAKISTAN: Polio outbreak in Swat
Polio has re-surfaced in districts hit by militancy

MINGORA, 13 October 2009 (IRIN) - Health officials say 13 cases of polio have been confirmed in Pakistan's volatile Swat District over the past four months, mainly because vaccinators have been unable to access children there for over a year.

Fierce fighting between government troops and Taliban militants, which began in May, has displaced hundreds of thousands of people from Swat. Before the army campaign in the area which ended in July, militants had prevented access for anti-polio teams.

"The Swat District currently has a polio outbreak. However, the good news is that we were able to immunize children who had left these areas. Upon their return we were able to immunize a significant proportion of children during a campaign in September," Melissa Corkum, polio programme coordination specialist with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Islamabad, told IRIN.

She said a three-day anti-polio campaign in Swat had begun on 12 October.

"This time I will get my one-year-old daughter protected against polio. My son, who is five, has had drops several times before. Once I took him to a hospital in Peshawar to get them, because the Taliban in control here at that time said anyone vaccinating children would be punished," Imran Gul, a Swat resident, told IRIN.

Sixty-two cases of polio have been confirmed so far this year in Pakistan, with 35 in North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

"These include 12 cases in the militancy-hit Bajuar Agency and 13 in Swat District," NWFP Health Director-General Fazal Mahmood said.

"The good thing is that most people are conscious they have missed out on vaccinations and are keen to get them now," said Hassan Khan, a Mingora-based physician.

According to the World Health Organization, Pakistan and Afghanistan are among four countries in the world where polio is still considered endemic.

kh/at/cb