257 anti polio vaccine links removed from social media: Babar Atta

ISLAMABAD: Focal Person to Prime Minister on Polio Eradication Babar Atta on Sunday said 257 links related to spreading propaganda against polio vaccine had been removed from internet, ARY News reported.

“As part of ongoing crackdown on malicious anti polio vaccine content on social media, 209 links have been removed from Facebook on request of the government of Pakistan,” Babar Atta said in a statement.

He said YouTube had removed 33 and Twitter 15 links related to anti polio vaccine.

The focal person to PM on polio eradication said 138 anti-polio vaccine links were still pending to be removed from social media.

As part of on going crack down against malicious anti polio vaccine content on Social Media, given below is an updated list of links/Pages blocked. This includes the 170 blocked last week. We expect more support from @Twitter & @YouTube in this regard. pic.twitter.com/YDaNnbqmQz

— Babar Atta (@babarbinatta) May 19, 2019

On May 17, third case of polio was reported from Sindh, which was the second from Karachi, this year so far.

As per details, a six-month-old child had become the third victim of the crippling disease in Sindh.

Read More: Third polio case reported from Sindh this year

The authorities, tasked to eradicate the virus, had blamed the increasing refusals, owing to misleading propaganda, as a reason behind the failure of the objective.

An official in the Sindh health ministry, from the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, had confirmed the child was another victim of the polio virus.

The officials had claimed that the family of the six-month-old male child had been refusing to vaccinate him against polio in many previous anti-polio campaigns.

“He was a victim of chronic refusal offered by his family to the polio teams in Union Council-12 in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, where they reside,” an official of the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) for polio in Sindh had claimed.