Polio: ‘School Heroes’ fight disease in province

The Express Tribun

The health department has initiated a ‘School Heroes’ programme whereby schoolchildren will be responsible for the polio immunisation drive. The target of these ‘heroes’ will be to get every child in the region vaccinated by June 2013. At the inauguration ceremony of the sub-national immunisation days, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Senior Minister Rahimdad Khan said all stakeholders should play their due role in eradicating the disease. He launched the campaign by administering the vaccine to a child. The three-day drive, which starts from December 17, is expected to inoculate more than five million children across the province, including Afghan refugees. A thousand schools in the province have nominated one teacher along with a team of 10 students, who will be trained to become focal persons for the programme. In the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), 400 schools will be involved to reach 120,000 students. The drive will include public service messages to motivate families to get their children vaccinated. K-P Deputy Director Expended Programme on Immunisation, Dr Janbaz Afridi said that the ‘polio heroes’ will be responsible to keep a check on the campaign in their areas and identify localities where teams have not reached. “They will inform their teachers if any child has missed the vaccination and the teacher will then notify the health department which will immediately send a team to immunise the child,” he added. Dr Afridi said the pilot project had been launched in high-risk districts of Peshawar, Charsadda, Mardan and Nowshera, where approximately 10,000 teachers will run the training programme. The drive will later be extended to the whole province. K-P education department and UNICEF will support the provincial health department in involving students and teachers. A total of 301,016 oral polio vaccines will be provided to the children. So far, 56 polio cases have been reported this year, out of which 24 are from K-P and 21 from Fata.