PESHAWAR, April 9: The federal government has asked the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to immediately implement the orders of the Peshawar High Court chief justice to establish vaccination points for the internally displaced children from Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency to put brakes on polio transmission.

In a letter sent on Monday, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Polio Eradication Shahnaz Wazir Ali told Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti that the federal government appreciated PHC CJ Dost Mohammad Khan for taking a suo moto notice of the risk of polio transmission to children in the province from Bara’s displaced children and wanted the provincial government to take immediate steps to comply with the court’s directives for containing polio spread.

The letter a copy of which is also dispatched to the PHC registrar also said the CJ directives had come in the wake of a polio alert sent to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by the World Health Organisation that called for urgent measures to stop the spread of poliovirus from displaced children to those sheltered in Nowshera and Peshawar.

WHO had warned that mass exodus of population from Bara due to military operation could snowball into major public health problems as the region was endemic for poliovirus for being without immunisation campaigns since 2009.

Though Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is considered to be progressing in right direction for implementing the ‘Augmented National Emergency Action Plan for Polio Eradication,2012’, there are immunity gaps in children migrating from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to Peshawar and Jalozai Camp in Nowshera.

This year, six polio cases have been reported in Bara tehsil so far, while the children affected by the virus in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa total four.

In the letter written on behalf of the prime minister, Ms Shahnaz told Mr Hoti that the federal government was extremely encouraged by the positive intervention of the PHC CJ, who had not only called upon the society at large to support the cause but also led from the front by asking the bar and the bench to create public awareness of the significance of oral polio vaccine.

According to her, the CJ also offered to link all petitions filed in his high court with immunisation status of children besides asking the advocate general to request all bars to launch a public awareness campaign and pass resolutions in this respect.The special assistant to the prime minister asked the chief minister to issue instructions to the relevant officials in the province to facilitate the advocate general on the matter and that the relevant quarters be told to liaise with the PHC registrar to help the court put a mechanism in place for linking the filing of petitions to immunisation status of children.

She also said well-manned transit points should be set up immediately at appropriate places where OPV could be administered to children round the clock.

“Rapid building up of super-high immunity of the displaced populations is of critical importance in pre-empting and preventing an outbreak like situation of polio in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” Ms Shahnaz told Mr Hoti.

Meanwhile, the PHC CJ has directed the Khyber Agency political agent to launch aggressive anti-polio campaign in the agency and in Jalozai Camp, Nowshera, for internally displaced persons, where thousands of displaced people from Bara tehsil have taken shelter.

According to an official at PHC, the CJ summoned Khyber Agency Political Agent Mutahir Zeb in his chamber and issued him to depute special teams along with security personnel at different checkpoints in Khyber Agency, especially Bara tehsil, and not vaccinate all children during checking.

He also asked him to depute vaccination teams at Torkham border so that the Afghan children entering Pakistan along with their families could be vaccinated under a campaign that should last at least 25 days.

The CJ also asked the Khyber Agency political agent to engage local ulema for issuance of edicts to create public awareness of polio vaccination.