Over 34 million children vaccinated against polio

More than 34 million children in Pakistan were successfully immunised against polio during last week's national vaccination round, health officials have said.

"We had nearly 98 percent coverage - a first in Pakistan," Dr Javed Iqbal, national polio campaign coordinator for the World Health Organization (WHO), said on Tuesday in Quetta, provincial capital of Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province.

"We're now on the right track. It's the final mile of the marathon," Iqbal added.

His comments come one week after the launch of the three-day national polio immunisation drive, the second this year, in an effort to eradicate the debilitating disease that mainly strikes children.

The WHO national campaign cell reported nationwide coverage of 97.7 percent, with 34.1 million children under the age of five successfully vaccinated, a result praised by UNICEF, one of three partners involved in the immunisation effort, along with WHO and the Pakistani government.

"During each polio campaign, we strive for high quality campaigns which reach all children under five years of age," Melissa Corkum, a spokeswoman for UNICEF's polio eradication efforts remarked, describing campaigns reaching more than 95 percent of the children under the age of five as "high quality".

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"The result achieved during the April campaign was strong," Corkum said, stressing, however, that the key now was ensuring that all districts and local governments achieved this target on a consistent basis.

North West Frontier Province

But despite, the positive assessment there remained operational challenges in a few key areas, she said, particularly in Pakistan's North West Front Province (NWFP).

"The main challenge is reaching populations to whom access is hampered, either due to population movements, or due to areas of insecurity, or due to cultural conservatism in some tribal areas," the UNICEF official said.

However, according to a report by the NWFP health department, about 97 percent was also achieved in the province and the country's federally-administered tribal areas, where 5.6 million children had been targeted.

Full eradication

But before full eradication can be declared, Pakistan must stop the virus's transmission in its tracks, as an area cannot be declared polio-free until one year without a case of polio.

Polio facts
	Although polio cases have decreased by over 99 percent since 1988 - from an estimated more than 350,000 cases then to 1,912 reported cases in 2006 - Polio does still exist.
	This reduction is the result of a global effort to eradicate the disease. Today, only four countries in the world remain polio-endemic: India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
	Despite the progress achieved since 1988, as long as a single child remains infected with the poliovirus, children in all countries are at risk of contracting the disease. The poliovirus can easily be imported into a polio-free country and can spread rapidly among unimmunised populations.
	There is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented. The polio vaccine, given multiple times, can protect a child for life.

Although there were many areas of the country that have not had any cases for significant periods of time - including Pakistani-administered Kashmir, the capital, Islamabad, as well as the country's populous Punjab province, which has not reported a case since July 2006 - much work remains.

"The majority of the cases are from a limited number of districts," Corkum said, noting the campaign would continue until no more polio cases were reported from any part of the country for three consecutive years.

"That means that even if we stop the transmission of the wild poliovirus in 2007, campaigns will continue until 2010," she clarified.

According to WHO, the world's success in eradicating polio depends on four countries where the virus remains endemic - India, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In 2006, there were 40 confirmed cases of polio in Pakistan and 31 in Afghanistan. This year, there have been no reported cases of polio in Afghanistan but seven in Pakistan. Of these, three were in the country's southwestern Sindh province, two were in NWFP and two in Balochistan.

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