KARACHI: A six-day polio campaign will kick-start in the city from Sept 26 in which 12,000 volunteers will work in the field to inoculate more than 2.2 million children, officials said on Wednesday.

The campaign would be launched in the six districts of Karachi — Malir, Korangi, South, West, East and Central — and some other districts of Sindh as a part of the government’s objective to eradicate the crippling disease from the province by the year end.

The exercise, called sub-national polio supplementary immunisation activities in Sindh, will target 2.2 million children aged five or less in all 188 union committees of the city.

Officials said some 12,000 volunteers would be deployed in the six districts with 1,884 area in-charges, and approximately 5,000 policemen at hand for security.

The deployment of the police guards, they said, had been better during a similar campaign last month in which around 98 per cent of the deployment had been done.

The policemen, they hoped, would similarly guard the polio teams during the campaign starting next week which has been particularly designed to cover areas where authorities found an increase in the number of children who missed previous campaigns for one reason or the other.

The police hierarchy said they had ordered that the best possible security measures be put in place for the campaign and were pleased to see it was working.

This included deployment of police commandos in sensitive localities.

City commissioner Ejaz Ahmed Khan asked the authorities concerned to galvanise the support of communities and religious leaders, and cooperate with them to make the campaign a success.

Beefed up police patrolling, snap checking and advance intelligence collection system will feature during the campaign in designated neighbourhoods.

Officials said the campaign would particularly focus on neighbourhoods where people were still refusing to inoculate their children.

Sindh has reported four polio cases so far this year with one each in Karachi and Jacobabad, and two in Shikarpur district. These districts are on the top of the government’s polio effort, said officials.

They said the campaign was part of a series of drives which the polio task force for Sindh had planned in a bid to fully eradicate the crippling disease, especially in the city, in the least possible time.

Similar campaigns, for selected neighbourhoods, and on the whole had been planned last month to effectively make the metropolis free from polio virus.

Officials said steps were being taken to ensure that no child was missed during the campaign, for which, closer coordination with the communities would be developed.

They said a fresh micro-plan was being prepared which would give an updated picture about all the indicators and figures vis-a-vis the next polio campaigns.

Published in Dawn September 22nd, 2016