PESHAWAR - The three-day anti-polio drive kicked off in Fata and Frontier Regions (FRs) on Monday to reach out to a target population of 7,67,360 children.
A total of 2,704 teams have been constituted to reach out to the population in Fata out of which 2380 are mobile teams, 247 fixed and 77 transit teams.
Secretary Finance Fata Secretariat Ghulam Qadir and Secretary Social Sectors Fata Dr Aftab Durrani inaugurated the campaign by administering drops to the children here at the Fata Secretariat.
Polio Country Chief Per Engbek, Director Health Services Fata Dr Fawad Khan, Fata Coordinator WHO Dr Sarfaraz Afridi, Polio Team Leader KP/Fata Dr Abdalla Arbab and High Risk Coordinator UNICEF Dr Shamsher were present on the occasion.
Speaking on the occasion, Secretary Social Sectors Fata, Dr Aftab Durrani said that despite a number of challenges and issues polio campaigns were carried out regularly in Fata and six campaigns had been carried out so far in 2013 in the entire tribal belt with the exception of North and South Waziristan agencies.
Dr Aftab Durrani said that due to ongoing fighting between militants in Tirah led to halt in the anti-polio campaign. But, he said apart from that robust strategy had been made to reach out to every child in tribal area.
Referring to the ban in North and South Waziristan agencies, Dr Aftab Durrani said that in North Waziristan Agency there was complete ban but in South Waziristan Agency the Mehsood Area was accessible and even in Wazir Area vaccination was carried out in the Army camps.
Dr Aftab Durrani said that in FR Peshawar polio campaign was not carried out since January this year but due to the commitment and support of political agents and Law Enforcing Agencies (LEAs) teams would visit each and every house in the semi tribal area so as to ensure drops to every child.
Secretary Social Sectors said that teams had been deployed on all transit points so to cater to the need of mobile population which was one of the major challenges for the teams. He said that we had opened up all cross border points for vaccination that included Angoor Ada, Ghulam Khan, Torkham, Bajaur and Mohmand.