Another case of polio has been found in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) province. This has caused six cases of polio in the country since the beginning of the year.
A representative from the Federal Ministry of Health said that the current case involved a nine-month-old child in Orakzai district, which used to be a part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
He was worried that the poliovirus had been found in 20 environmental samples from 12 areas across the country. He said that this virus had hurt yet another child.
The rep stressed that this virus is especially dangerous for kids younger than five, and they asked parents to make sure their kids got polio drops to protect them from getting the disease.
Sindh province’s government started a seven-day anti-polio campaign last week, on November 28. The campaign is aimed at more than 10 million children under 5 years old. Dr. Saad Khalid Niaz, who is the caretaker health minister for Sindh, started the program by giving polio drops to kids at a hospital in Karachi.
The effort has the support of more than 80,000 polio workers and supervisors. To make sure the workers are safe, more than 5,300 police officers are on duty, and the Pakistan Rangers are helping to keep the vaccinators safe as well.
Dr. Niaz said that two cases of polio had been reported in Karachi this year, and that new tests of the environment showed possible links to different parts of Afghanistan.
