look news india
Superstition is becoming a major obstacle in the ongoing fight against polio virus in Pakistan. Recently, incidents of attacks on polio vaccination teams have increased, due to which many parents are hesitant in giving the vaccine to their children. Due to this, the number of polio cases in the country has increased to 68 this year.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said in a statement that a case of poliovirus type-1 has been reported from Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which is the 10th case there this year. Of the total 68 cases, 27 have been reported from Balochistan, 20 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 19 from Sindh, and one case each from Punjab and Islamabad.
Pakistan organizes several mass vaccination campaigns every year, in which children are given the vaccine at home. The NIH advises the public that all children under the age of five need to be given multiple doses of polio vaccine to give them high immunity. Recently, a massive vaccination campaign was launched in 143 districts, with the aim of vaccinating more than four crore children.
The second phase of this campaign has started from Monday, in which the children of Balochistan province will be given the vaccine. At the same time, the Punjab government has sought three more days to comply with the Supreme Court’s direction to send farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal to the hospital, while the court has postponed the hearing of the case till January 2.
