KARACHI: While the World Health Organisation has recently put travel restrictions on the country for its high contribution to polio cases being detected across the world, the health authorities of Sindh on Monday recorded this year’s fifth polio case in Karachi in an 18-month-old girl residing in one of the areas labelled as the most sensitive as far as the crippling viral disease is concerned.

Sources in the Prime Minister’s Polio Cell in Islamabad identified the fifth victim as Hafsa, daughter of Marjan, whose stool samples had been sent to the National Institute of Health three weeks ago.

Officials in the Sindh government said the girl was among those children who missed out on the past polio campaigns because of refusals by their families.

“Family living in Manghopir’s Sultanabad Sector 3 didn’t allow her to be administered a single booster during our frequent campaigns. Our volunteers risk their lives to save those children, yet we see all this,” said a senior provincial government official in a dejected tone.

Administratively, the officials said, the locality fell in the union council 8 of Gadap Town. Out of the five polio cases detected so far in the city, three were reported in Gadap alone, while one each belonged to Baldia and Orangi.

Polio workers have repeatedly come under attacks in Gadap town in recent years, compelling the authorities to suspend the immunisation campaigns quite often in Gadap and some other areas of the city.

Officials in Gadap Town said the girl’s family came to Karachi from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas some six months back.

They were unable to say to which tribal agency the family belonged.

Last year a polio team was attacked during an anti-polio drive in Gadap. Similarly, a local paramedic associated with polio vaccination was shot dead and a doctor working for the World Health Organisation, Fosten Dido, from Ghana and his driver were wounded in 2012 in two separate attacks in the Sohrab Goth area. Also in December 2012, a young volunteer associated with the anti-polio campaign was shot dead in an attack in Gadap town.

While the Sindh government initially ordered the law-enforcement agencies to provide security to polio workers during such campaigns, a strategy was later worked out to provide better security to volunteers and ensure maximum coverage during anti-polio campaigns.

On Jan 21, 2014, three polio workers, two of them female, were killed in Qayyumabad.

Following the deadly attack, theSindh government decided that motorcycle riding be banned for eight hours in 24 union councils of Karachi on Sundays for the safety of the vaccinators participating in anti-polio drive in these areas during these hours.

Since then the special polio campaigns are run in selected areas of the city on Sundays with proper security cover.

However, this time the health authorities postponed its special polio campaign in ‘sensitive’ neighbourhoods because of police preoccupation with protest demonstrations organised by some political parties on Sunday, the officials said.

The vaccination has attained even more importance in the wake of the travel restrictions imposed by the World Health Organisation on the country for its staggeringly high contribution to the polio cases recorded globally this year.

The expanded programme on immunisation is engaged in administering oral polio vaccine (OPV) to international passengers at airports.

But as the provincial authorities have stocks of vaccine just for children aged less than five years, they have asked the centre to supply at least 150,000 vials of OPV. Each vial contains 20 doses.

The Sindh government has also authorised all district hospitals and senior district officials to administer vaccine and issue vaccination certificates to the people scheduled to go abroad.

Officials said they were investigating reports published in a section of press about the issuance of vaccination certificates by some major hospitals on hefty price. Similar complaints had been received about certain government hospitals, which were to vaccinate people and issue certificates to them free of charge.

The city, which has recorded five cases in the first half of 2014, had remained a polio-free city in 2012. Pakistan now carries a huge burden of 60 polio cases out of fewer than 80 worldwide.

Meanwhile, in a press statement issued on Monday, the WHO expressed its ‘deep concern’ over the circulation of what it called an ‘incorrect statement’ by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which alleged the involvement of UN agencies in events conducted by Dr Shakeel Afridi.

The WHO said its ‘unequivocal position’ that all health programmes, including immunisation campaigns, must be used only for their intended humanitarian purpose of protecting and promoting health.

“WHO reiterates that there is absolutely no connection whatsoever between the WHO and the “fake vaccination campaign” conducted by Dr Afridi,” it added.

It said the WHO and its partners were committed to supporting the government and people of Pakistan in their efforts to implement fully the polio eradication strategies.