KARACHI: As the six-day campaign against polio in the province concludes on Saturday, an important briefing brought together six district commissioners of Karachi on a mobile team action plan developed by health officials in collaboration with foreign experts to strengthen the country’s fight against the disease.

The meeting held on Friday was presided over by coordinator of the Emergency Operation Centre for Polio, Sindh, Fayaz Jatoi. Also in attendance was Dr Shaukat Chandio representing Unicef, Sindh, Temesgen Demeke of the WHO, Unicef polio chief Aidan O’Leary, technical focal person Sindh Dr Ahmad Ali Shaikh, and Dr Asma from the WHO federal office.

Four cases of polio have so far been reported in Sindh, which had 12 reported cases last year. The plan will provide support to the ongoing and upcoming campaigns against polio targeting high-risk areas in the city and northern Sindh.

Under the plan, mobile teams will be deployed in 89 union councils of Karachi. Area supervisors will be concentrating on polio eradication on a month long basis and will be responsible for team efficiency in designated neighbourhoods.

“We have a different strategy for mobile teams which needs to be rolled out as soon as possible to increase efficiency in programme delivery,” said Mr Jatoi, during the briefing.

Dr Demeke shared details about the aims and objectives of the plan and said the action plan would be applied in 89 union councils of Karachi as well as in northern Sindh.

“The purpose of calling deputy commissioners is to brief them as to what has been planned for mobile teams, as well as to highlight the support needed from them for the implementation of the action plan,” he said.

Mr Jatoi said that out of the 89 UCs, 15 were considered high risk while the target population was 750,014 children under the age of five.

He also focused upon the role of union council medical officers and asked the district commissioners to take them on board during the campaigns against polio.

Challenge to end polio

“The challenge here is to ensure that every child is vaccinated by a well-trained accepted vaccinator as well as to increase acceptability of vaccinators in posh areas,” Mr Jatoi explained, adding that a task team had been set-up and given the job to monitor the progress made on the issue.

“A clear timeline has been set for human resource training and implementation of all activities to be carried out under the plan.

“The new strategy will involve 11 days of planning before the campaign. This would be followed by field work, re-validation, workload rationalisation, feedback to key stakeholders and continuous micro-plan updating,” said Mr Jatoi.

He also spoke about how the first step for the action plan was to establish task teams at the district and the UC level.

The district commissioners, he pointed out, would have their own action plans and implement them. District task teams would be involved in preparation, planning, training, micro plans and workload rationalisation, among other things.

Meanwhile, the anti-polio campaign being carried out in the 51 union councils of Karachi and 12 districts of Sindh continued on Friday.

The target population for Karachi is 865,000 for which 3,000 health teams have been deployed in the city. The target population in Sindh is 3,363,539.

Given the progress made against polio, experts are according a lot of importance to the ongoing campaign.

“Pakistan has reported far less polio cases this year (13) as compared to the previous years; 54 and 306 polio cases were reported in 2015 and 2016 respectively,” a health official told Dawn.

He lauded the success of the campaign, stating that environmental samples had been found negative in three months in Sindh.

“We have to maintain that pressure if we are to win the war against polio, which remains endemic (only) in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he said.

To monitor the progress of the campaign, commissioner Karachi Ejaz Ahmed Khan along with Sindh health secretary Ahmed Bux Narejo visited district Malir and attended a briefing by concerned officials.

The meeting reviewed the impact of the drive and discussed how to intensify the campaign and reduce the number of children missed in previous drives.

The anti-polio drive in Karachi is currently continuing in the union councils of Gadap, Orangi, Site, North Karachi, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Keamari, Korangi, Bin Qasim, North Nazimabad, Liaquatabad, Gulberg and Saddar.

While the districts of Sukkur, Ghotki, Jacobabad, Khairpur, Larkana, Dadu, Shaheed Benazirabad, Kashmor, Kambar, Shikarpur, Sanghar and Naushehroferoz are being focused in the interior parts of Sindh during the campaign.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2016