KARACHI, Jan 18: In view of the polio cases reported from the provincial border areas, vaccination teams of the provincial immunisation programme will visit those areas during the three-day national immunisation campaign scheduled to begin from Jan 22.

Official sources said that the Expanded Programme on Immunization, Sindh, and relevant authorities in other provinces, including Balochistan and Punjab, at a recently held cross border meeting on polio eradication activities had agreed to have an exchange of expertise for extra-monitoring during anti-polio campaigns, so that a zero reporting of polio cases in the bordering areas along provinces could be ensured.

A source said that inter-provincial monitoring activities in districts like Rahimyar Khan, Rajanpur and Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab, Jafferabad, Nasirabad, Dera Bugti and Qila Abdullah, Khuzdar and Hub in Balochistan would be undertaken as those were considered as polio risk areas and from where population usually travelled across the border areas.

Dr Salma Kauser Ali of Sindh EPI said that under a revised micro-planning a sharing of field staffs between provinces was also being considered so that if staff of one province were unable to reach the children located in some of their far-flung areas, they could entrust the job to polio staff of other provinces to maximise the polio immunisation coverage. If some of the areas located in border areas were easily accessible to the polio staff of Balochistan or Punjab, then there was no use to assign Sindh polio staff to reach such pockets, she said.

In the meantime, at the cross border meeting on polio, which was chaired by Sindh Health Minister Fauzia A. Lari at Sukkur on Jan 15, it was recommended that activities in respect of both implementation and supervision should be synchronised between the adjacent districts and the focal persons should remain responsible for communicating these activities to the relevant district officials as well as the provincial minister and the project director of EPI Sindh.

According to a source privy to the meeting, it was also resolved that every district should exchange information about the missed areas for taking a joint action across the borders.

The meeting was attended by Sindh Health Secretary Malik Asrar, Special Secretary Health Dr Abdul Majid, director-generals of health from all the provinces, representatives of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Unicef.

It was also decided that provinces should establish permanent posts at the entry points for polio as well as routine immunisation. Every district should share their micro plan with the adjacent areas with specific aspects where needed.

At the meeting Dr Ali maintained that the future challenges could be met through continued political commitment, addressing management issues effectively at the district level and through paying special attention to problematic union councils.

EDO Health Jacobabad informed the meeting that his team was facing problems of excessive nomadic influx and frequent movement of population across the border shared mainly with Balochistan.

EDO Health Ghotki viewed that it was difficult to reach pockets of population in district Kashmore, border shared with Ghotki and offered his support to cover these children not only for polio but for routine immunisation if Kashmore district needed to do so.

EDO Qambar stressed the need for setting up permanent EPI points at entry routes from Balochistan.

The provincial manager of EPI, Balochistan, was of the view that it was the responsibility of both sides to vaccinate children and there were so many deficiencies in the micro planning which should be rectified.

Dr Yahya Mustafa of the WHO said that there were some patchy coverage within several districts and union councils and there was a need to improve the campaign quality uniformly in all the union councils to stop the indigenous circulation of polio virus.