The number of polio cases in 2019 has reached 123

ISLAMABAD: The outbreak of the anti-polio campaign in April last year proved to be a massive blow to health authorities, and the number of polio-infected children reached 100 in 2019.

 According to the report, a health official of the National Institutes of Health said that, despite the beginning of the year 2020, cases that appear for one more month could be added to the 2019 list because the polio case was registered in a given year to confirm the virus. Rather than the date of sampling for the test.

He said poliovirus needs at least three weeks to activate, so polio cases are confirmed three weeks after sampling.

"In the next few weeks we may confirm more polio cases in 2019," he said.

On the other hand, on the second day of the new year, six new cases of polio emerged from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh.

According to the National Emergency Operation Center (EOC) for polio, a case of polio was reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 5 in Sindh.

According to the EOC, out of the cases that came up in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, two were from Tank, one to Bannu, one to Dera Ismail Khan and one to Mohmand.

According to the National Institutes of Health, Tank includes a 2-year-old child and a 5-month-old brother in polio-infected children, and both cases refuse to administer the polio vaccine.

Similarly, a two-year-old girl in DI Khan, a 26-month-old baby in Bannu and a 6-month-old child in Mohmand were infected with the poliovirus.

A new polio case was reported in Dadu District in Sindh.

It is worth mentioning here that only 12 polio cases were reported in 2018 while eight polio cases were reported in 2017.

 Polio cases surfaced in 2019.

He said that in December, he launched a new anti-polio campaign through a successful nationwide anti-polio campaign, the first successful campaign since January, as the April campaign was affected by the incident in Peshawar. Some people have negatively propagated me that polio vaccine is affecting school children. '

Dr Rana Safdar said that nationwide campaigns were planned in February and April 2020 with efforts to improve routine vaccine coverage, which could reverse the wave of poliovirus outbreaks.

He said that "considering the current risks, the National Emergency Operations Center urges all parents to get their children vaccinated with a polio vaccine from the nearest health centre."

Besides, on December 30, the Ministry of National Health's anti-polio program claimed that the polio program was finally "moving in the right direction" after experiencing many conflicts over the past six months.

The Anti-Polio Program claimed that more than 100% of children were vaccinated during the anti-polio campaign in December, and 4409 were vaccinated against a target of 30 million 96 million children nationwide.