Anti-polio campaign: 10 times more refusal cases recorded in federal capital

Islamabad: Not less than 10 times more refusal cases as compared to the past have been recorded during the current anti-polio drive under National Immunization Day (NID) here in the federal capital including both the urban and rural areas.Data collected by ‘The News’ on Saturday has revealed that parents of thousands of children did not allow the health department’s teams to administer anti-polio vaccine to their children and hundreds of families went ‘unavailable’ during the drive concluded two days back.The final statistics after conclusion of anti-polio drive reveal that over 1000 children could not be administered vaccine even after catch-up activity.The fake and baseless news about quality of polio vaccine in Peshawar and ideas propagandized through social media as an attempt to sabotage the national campaign against polio affected the countrywide anti-polio drive badly.Thousands of parents refused to get their children immunized during the drive after the propaganda against polio vaccine originated from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after which the teams and senior officials of the health department had to convince parents in a door-to-door activity that the polio vaccine being used is of the finest quality and has no problem, said District Health Officer Islamabad Dr. Muhammad Najeeb Durrani while talking to ‘The News’ on Saturday.He added the drive in the federal capital suffered a severe reaction due to the malicious campaign against polio vaccine in KPK though after a lot of efforts by all stakeholders including district government, the losses have been minimized. In routine, we record 100 to 150 cases of refusal during anti-polio drives in Islamabad but this time, the cases were 1000 to 1500, he said.A senior data entry operator at Polio Cell in DHO Office said during the past campaigns, most of the refusal cases were permanent in nature means the same parents refusing administration of anti-polio vaccine to their children in each drive but this time well over 900 new cases of refusal have been recorded.He said most of the families who were not available for vaccination of their children during the first three days of anti-polio drive refused administration of vaccine to their children during the catch-up activity. It is also found that most of the refusal cases are of families having Pashtun origin, he said.It is important that the anti-polio drive has been concluded and the refusal cases of children would be taken as missed children. When asked, Dr. Durrani said National Emergency Operation Centre or the concerned authorities in the federal government would decide whether some activity would be arranged to cover the missed cases or not at the moment.

from The News International - National http://bit.ly/2V29xvY