Pakistan: Polio cases increasing continuously in Pakistan, campaign started again

A new nationwide anti-polio campaign was launched in Pakistan on Monday. This campaign has been started in view of the rapidly increasing cases of polio among children. Health officials gave information about this.

Let us tell you that this is the sixth campaign of this year and will run for five days, which aims to vaccinate children under 5 years of age in high risk areas. 

The latest drive was aimed at Islamabad and high-risk districts in eastern Punjab and southwestern Balochistan province. At the same time, a similar campaign will be launched in the North West in the first week of December. 

Pakistan conducts regular polio campaigns despite attacks on police and workers assigned to the vaccination campaign. Extremists falsely claim that the vaccination drive is a conspiracy to sterilize children.

Pakistan has recorded 20 new cases of polio since April and the outbreak has been seen as a setback for efforts to eradicate the disease, which can cause severe paralysis in children. 

Let us tell you that Pakistan came close to eliminating polio disease last year, when only one case was reported. Since then new cases have been reported in the North West, prompting the government to launch anti-polio campaigns at short intervals in high-risk areas across the country. The last such drive was launched earlier this month.

Pakistan's anti-polio campaigns are also supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which last month pledged $1.2 billion to the effort to end polio worldwide. The money will be used for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative's strategy by 2026.

The initiative aims to eliminate the polio virus in the last two endemic countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the foundation said last month.