The Sindh government in wake of increasing number of polio cases in the province has established a separate police force headed by SPP rank police officer with 700 police personnel to ensure foolproof security to polio teams during four month of low transmission period of polio virus starting from current month.
Chief Minister Sindh Qaim Ali Shah directed Inspector General Sindh Police to arrange 50 percent personnel of this force each from Karachi and interior Sindh with sophisticated weapons and vehicles.
He directed secretary health and commissioner Karachi to launch crash programme for anti polio campaign in eleven most-affected union councils of Karachi after Ashura and also to include Pashtoon females in the polio teams to make it more successful.
Presiding over meeting to review anti-polio campaign in the province he said despite our efforts to eliminate the menace of polio, as many as 23 polio cases-21 from Karachi and one each from Dadu and Sanghar has been reported.
He said out of these 23 polio cases, 21 cases pertain to Pashto speaking families.
He said actually, polio cases were being injected into Sindh province through migration of unvaccinated pashtoon internally displaced persons from federally administrated tribal areas (FATA) and Sindh government was getting bad name without its failure.
Experts and organisations working against the polio menace were also of the view FATA has become the home of polio virus, which was forwarding it to the rest of the country and added Sindh was most affected in terms of polio virus and terrorism.
He said though Sindh was being injected with poliovirus but we should have to control over our weaknesses and shortfalls to curb this virus at once.
He directed commissioner Karachi and provincial secretary health to administer polio drops to more than 107,000 reported children and this process should be repeated again and again.
He stressed upon the need of proper monitoring of anti polio campaigns and directed for establishing a separate monitoring cell in the supervision of additional Secretary Health to monitor the activities, identify the weakness and report to him time to time so that the complete elimination of polio could be ensured.
He directed the officers to put their all resources in the field to achieve the target of making Sindh as polio free province by the end of 2015.
The coordinator polio Shahnaz Wazir Ali said at present 235 polio cases have been reported from all parts of Pakistan out of which the big number of 151 cases pertains to FATA and 48 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa only.
She said Pakhtoon families residing in specific eleven union councils of Karachi where anti polio teams were not only experiencing refusal cases but also facing security threats.
She said at least permanent security force was needed for 100 percent coverage in these areas.
The provincial coordinator for polio also pointed out her financial problems as according to her the expenditure made by anti polio organisations have not been reimbursed by federal government beside she sought for sufficient quantity of vaccinations available to them from federal government.
She said we were now including Pashtoon females in the polio teams to cover their residential areas.
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