Pakistan reports another Polio case in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
According to the spokesperson, the drive involved almost two lakh polio workers
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KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA: Pakistan has reported another case of Polio after a nine-month-old child in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Orakzai area became the latest victim of the paralysing disease, ARY News reported on Saturday. With this, it became the sixth polio case of 2023 in Pakistan.
Dr. Nadeem Jan, the caretaker Minister of Health, stated that actions are being taken on an emergency basis to eradicate polio, according to ARY News. On November 11, the Ministry of Health revealed that a 31-month-old child in Karachi had been diagnosed with polio. During the year's final polio drive, at least 21.6 million youngsters received polio drops.
The Punjab province's anti-polio campaign concluded on Friday. Quoting a spokesperson, ARY News reported that the polio vaccination was administered to over 1.6 million children in Lahore, seven lakh children in Rawalpindi, 1.2 million in Faisalabad, and over 990,000 children in Multan. The goal of the anti-polio campaign was to vaccinate more than 22.5 million youngsters.
According to the spokesperson, the drive involved almost two lakh polio workers. In Lahore, 14,000 workers went door-to-door in all neighbourhoods, administering polio drops, reported ARY News. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization in a recent report said that the risk of the international spread of poliovirus still remains a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
There are no travel restrictions in Pakistan as of now. The risk of the international spread of Wild Poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Africa is based on many factors.
"The ongoing transmission in eastern Afghanistan with cross border spread into Pakistan" marks one of the reasons for polio spread in Pakistan, according to the report.