PESHAWAR : The third anti-polio campaign of the year will commence from March 26 in 25 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa including tribal districts and Afghan refugee camps, wherein, over 5.5 million children under the age of five will be administered polio drops.

This was decided in a meeting held here on Friday at Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with Coordinator EOC Capt (R) Karman Ahmad in the chair. The EPI Director Dr Akram Shah, Team Leads UNICEF, WHO, BMGF and other relevant staff of the EOC and communications were present on the occasion. The meeting reviewed the readiness status of logistics, operations and security status for the upcoming March campaign and showed satisfaction over it.

It was informed that the campaign will be conducted in 18 settled and 7 tribal districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa including Peshawar, Charsadda, Mardan, Swabi, Swat, Malakand, Battagram, Chitral, Kohat, Karak, Hangu, Bannu, Upper Dir, Lower Dir, Lakki Marwat, Tank, Dera Ismail Khan, Bajaur, Momand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan and South Waziristan.

A total of 21,861 teams have been constituted to vaccinate the target children out of which 15,525 were mobile teams, 1,196 fixed, 820 transit teams, 153 roaming teams and 4,075 area in-charges have been deployed to ensure quality campaign, the meeting was informed.

The meeting was informed that all age vaccination will be started at Torkham border for all the passengers and visitors crossing international border in view of the virus circulation in the last two endemic countries of the world.

Speaking on the occasion, EOC Coordinator Kamran Ahmad said that strict security measures should be taken to provide conducive environment to the teams to carry out quality campaign as low transmission season was the best opportunity to weaken and hit the virus and stop wild polio virus transmission in the region. He said that more than 20 thousand security personnel in the settled districts will be deployed with the teams to ensure security of their personnel during the March campaign and thanked Home Department, Army, Police and other law enforcing agencies for their support in polio campaigns.

Kamran Ahmad appealed to the parents to not pay heed to propagandas and misconceptions and vaccinate their children against polio saying that polio vaccine was the safest vaccine used by all Muslim countries. He said that the polio eradication is a national emergency and is led by the government of Pakistan with the technical support of partners and brushed aside the rumours about polio programme as western conspiracy against our children.