Pakistani medical authorities today launched a countrywide anti-polio campaign to vaccinate more than 38 million children.
It has been termed as the second-last polio campaign of the current low transmission season.
Dr Rana Safdar of the anti-polio cell said that a "total of 37.71 million under-five children will be vaccinated".
They include 19.38 million children in Punjab, 8.85 million in Sindh, 5.73 million in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 2.46 million in Balochistan, 1 million in the FATA tribal region, 0.7 million in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, 238,000 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 330,000 children in Islamabad.
It is a three-day campaign with upto seven days as catch-up period to ensure no child is missed.
Safdar said during the campaign, vitamin-A supplement will also be administered to around 35 million children aged between 6-59 months along with oral vaccines (OPV) aimed at boosting immunity against diseases such as measles.
A total of 260,000 personnel will take part in the campaign.
The current polio epidemiology in the country is the best ever observed with cases declining from 306 in 2014 to 54 in 2015 to 20 in 2016 and 8 in 2017.
In 2018, only one polio case has been reported so far from Dukki district in Balochistan.
Besides Pakistan, polio remains endemic only in Afghanistan and Nigeria.
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