CEOs Health Asked To Devise Comprehensive Plan For Upcoming Anti-polio Drive

Coordinator of Punjab Emergency Operations Centre (EOC)Khizer Afzaal Chaudhary on Wednesday urged the Chief Executive Officers(CEOs) of Health Authorities of Rawalpindi and Attock to devise a comprehensive plan to cover high-risk mobile population so that the quality of the upcoming polio eradication campaign could be improved

RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Aug, 2023 ) :Coordinator of Punjab Emergency Operations Centre (EOC)Khizer Afzaal Chaudhary on Wednesday urged the Chief Executive Officers(CEOs) of Health Authorities of Rawalpindi and Attock to devise a comprehensive plan to cover high-risk mobile population so that the quality of the upcoming polio eradication campaign could be improved.

He was speaking to the officials of district health authorities of Rawalpindi and Attock in the aftermath of a special campaign conducted in both districts in response to positive samples in the garrison city.

The CEOs of Rawalpindi and Attock as well as partner staff from both districts participated in the meeting on a video link.

Issuing directives to the district health administrations, the Punjab EOC head stressed reviewing movement patterns of high-risk mobile population activities and called for the identification of additional transit sites in Rawalpindi's tehsil Taxila.

"Rawalpindi is far more sensitive than any other area in Punjab due to its proximity with polio hotspots and frequent movement of high-risk population. After the isolation of wild poliovirus in environmental samples recently it is now an area of international concern", he underlined.

Khizer who is also the head of the polio eradication programme in Punjab called on both districts to work on a plan for improving campaign quality before the start of the next polio eradication campaign.

He assured them that Punjab EOC was ready to provide every support in lieu of additional resources and human resources for deployment at the transit sites.

The EOC head instructed the CEOs to monitor the campaign themselves and recommended action against officials as well as workers who were underperforming.

He suggested the exclusion of underachieving officials from the next supplementary immunization activity.

Khizer instructed the officials to focus on improving the catch-up days' quality through a "sweep strategy".

He underlined that the entire area must be swept especially those houses that had been marked as having "zero children" or "not-available" children.

The EOC head directed the district officials to supervise the area in charge and emphasized that the percentage of language-appropriate teams must be increased in migrants' settlements.

Punjab has recently wrapped up a campaign after the polio virus was detected in one of the environmental sites in Rawalpindi.

The campaign called Outbreak Response (OBR) was held in five tehsils of Rawalpindi, four tehsils of Attock and one union council of Mianwali.

The vaccination campaign was held in Fateh Jang, Hazro, Attock and Hassan Abdal of Attock district while in Rawalpindi the campaign was organised in Gujar Khan, Rawalpindi Cantonment, Rawalpindi City, Rawalpindi Rural and Taxila tehsils.

In Mianwali the campaign was held in the Afghan refugee camp, while over 1.96 million children were vaccinated during the campaign.