PESHAWAR: The government has declared the 18 polio-endemic union councils in Peshawar district as separate administrative unit to focus on the vaccination efforts there.

The decision has been made to give more attention to those union councils as part of polio eradication efforts in the province.

On Monday, the deputy commissioner issued an office order, stating that an officer would be deputed exclusively for monitoring anti-polio activities in the 18 union councils where the virus had been present in the sewerage water for the last one year consistently.

He said that it was observed with grave concerns that polio environmental sample of the mentioned union councils draining into Shaheen Muslim Town had been testing positive for poliovirus for more than one year. It was hampering polio eradication efforts, he added.

Peshawar DC says dedicated officer to monitor anti-polio efforts in these 18 union councils

“The general living condition in these union councils is also below satisfaction which requires immediate attention of the district administration,” said the order.

It said that those union councils were part of Town-I but the administration remained unable to pay special focus to them. It added that multi-sectoral approach was required to uplift social indicators of those union councils including reduction in number of refusals of oral polio vaccine and converting their polio environmental sewerage water sample into negative.

The deputy commissioner said that unless those union councils were treated as a separate administrative unit under the command of a dedicated officer, their social indicators, including gaps of anti-polio campaigns, would not improve.

“Therefore, I, the deputy commissioner of Peshawar in the capacity of principal representative of provincial government in the district and being coordinating head of district government do hereby order that from now onwards, those union councils from where polio environmental sample has been testing positive, will be treated as a separate administrative unit of district Peshawar,” said the order.

The administrative head of the unit will be stationed temporarily at Naseerullah Khan Babar Hospital until alternative arrangements are made.

The presence of poliovirus in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is the cause of main concern for the authorities associated with the eradication the crippling disease.

Pakistan has recorded six polio cases of total 22 worldwide so far that include 16 from Afghanistan. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan have become a serious issue for the global polio eradication initiative of the World Health Organisation.

The last case reported from Charsadda district has genetic linkage with Peshawar while the virus detected on water samples of Nowshera and Rawalpindi also resemble it.

“I have decided to oversee the countrywide polio campaign starting on November 12 from Peshawar. We want to accord special attention to the endemic union councils where virus is main threat to the nationwide campaign,” Babar Bin Atta, focal person on polio to prime minister, told Dawn.

He said that they were strengthening vaccination at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to immunise each and every child as population movement was posing threats to the eradication drive.

“All the cases have been recorded from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nigeria is another polio-endemic country along with Pakistan and Afghanistan but it hasn’t reported any case this year so the main attention remains on our region,” said Mr Atta.

He said that order by deputy minister was issued after they requested the chief minister in a meeting last week to give special attention to the union councils, which were billed as the main hindrance in the polio eradication efforts.

Published in Dawn, October 30th , 2018