MADRID, 13 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Pakistani authorities will launch this Monday a new vaccination campaign against polio that will target more than six million children under the age of five residing in 39 districts, after confirming several positives.
The Pakistani Ministry of Health has indicated that the vaccination campaign will take place between February 13 and 17 in the districts of Khiber Pakhtunjua –Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Laki Maruat, North Waziristan, Lower South Waziristan and Upper South Waziristan- -, Punjab, Lahore and Faisalabad.
Likewise, “partial” campaigns will be carried out in 30 districts, some of them on the border with Afghanistan, as well as in Afghan refugee camps and among populations at risk, according to the Pakistani newspaper ‘Dawn’.
The Ministry of Health has indicated that the campaign will be launched after confirming two positives in environmental samples in Lahore, the first of which was detected on January 19 and has genetic links to poliovirus in the Afghan province of Nangarhar (east).
In this way, it is the first proof of a cross-border transmission in more than a year, for which the Minister of Health, Abdulqadir Patel, has asked parents to ensure that their children are vaccinated against polio .
“Poliovirus on either side of the border is a threat to children in both countries. Only repeated oral doses of the polio vaccine can guarantee lasting protection,” he said, while stressing that “vaccination teams They will continue to go door-to-door as long as necessary.”
Polio, a highly contagious disease that mainly affects children, is transmitted mainly by the fecal-oral route, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The virus is endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, after Nigeria declared its eradication in 2020.
Vaccination campaigns have run into difficulties in Afghanistan and Pakistan due to conspiracy theories that immunization causes infertility or that medical workers are spies, leading to numerous attacks on them or the agents who are deployed to strengthen your security. Before seizing power in 2021, the Taliban banned these campaigns in areas under their control.
