ISLAMABAD, Feb 16: The National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) has decided to join the fight against polio by offering its resources for awareness and immunisation campaigns, an official said on Monday.

National Database and Registration Authority Chairman Ali Arshad Hakeem on Friday okayed the plan to simultaneously use the authority’s mobile registration units for vaccination and its registration centres for promoting awareness about the crippling disease.

This development is being seen as a “landmark” initiative because thousands of additional children will be accessible through this arrangement.

“We have approached Nadra in accordance with the directives of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to engage every sector that has presence anywhere in the country, as new and innovative ideas are required to reach out to children that were missed during the door-to-door national anti-polio rounds,” the official said.

He said each of the almost 200 National Database and Registration Authority mobile registration units operating across the country would carry a member of the anti-polio team during the upcoming rounds to be held in March.

“We are also chalking out a strategy under which thousands of adults who visit hundreds of National Database and Registration Authority swift registration centres across the country will be informed about the facility,” he added.

According to the official, on average around 50,000 people visit these centres each day, so at least 5,000 children are expected to be immunised everyday during the three-day national campaign next month.

During a similar arrangement with the National Highways and Motorway Police in which polio teams were available at all 57 toll plazas in the country, the health authorities reached up to 40,000 children during the last campaign.