QUETTA: Despite frequent polio eradication drives across the country, three more cases of polio were reported on Thursday in Balochistan, ARY News reported.
The coordinator of Emergency Operation Centre, Rashid Razzaq, while addressing a press conference along with religious clerics in Quetta, has said, three cases have been reported of the crippling disease of polio in Balochistan, so far this year.
“As many as 25 million children will be administered anti-polio drops, in the drive that will be launched in the province from December 10,” said Mr Rashid Razzaq.
The National Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) for Polio Eradication on October 17, notified two new polio cases from Gadap area of Karachi and a tribal district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The first case of polio was confirmed in a 42 month-old girl from Gadap, Karachi and the other case in a 55-month old female child in Khyber tribal district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The lab detected Polio virus from their stool samples on the 1st of October and 30th September respectively. Fortunately, both girls had received multiple doses of the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) which boosted their immunity and protected them from a life-long paralysis.
World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed concern over spread of polio and termed it as an international health emergency.
Related: WHO says spread of polio remains international health emergency
“We are so close to the elimination of polio, but we have to use all of our international tools to achieve this end,” Helen Rees, chair of the WHO’s international emergency committee, told reporters on a telephone briefing.
“The ongoing situation continues to require that a public health emergency of international concern should be applied.”
