Karachi begins week-long polio campaign targeting 2.5 million children

KARACHI: The Sindh government on Monday started a week-long anti-polio campaign in Karachi, with authorities aiming to vaccinate 2.5 million children under the age of five amid continued challenges in eliminating the virus.

The formal inauguration was held at the Model EPI Centre of the National Institute of Child Health, where Karachi Commissioner Syed Hasan Naqvi administered polio drops to children and appealed to parents to cooperate with teams visiting homes and ensure their children are protected from the disease.

According to officials from the Sindh Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), every child under five is supposed to receive polio drops during each campaign, including those who have already been vaccinated earlier. They said Karachi has recorded its strongest environmental surveillance outcome since August 2023, with 11 of 12 environmental samples testing negative for poliovirus. The only positive sample came from District East.

Across Sindh, 28 out of 29 environmental surveillance sites have returned negative results for poliovirus, according to EOC-Sindh officials.

An EOC-Sindh official said the latest improvement was a positive sign but cautioned that the virus had not yet been wiped out and that maintaining high immunisation coverage remained necessary to halt transmission.

The same official said Karachi’s large mobile population made every anti-polio drive important. She added that repeated doses help build stronger immunity and limit the spread of the virus, and said the oral polio vaccine was safe, effective and endorsed by health experts around the world.

She also said the Pakistan Paediatric Association (Sindh) and other medical organisations had backed the campaign and urged families to vaccinate all eligible children.

Workforce and security arrangements

Around 26,000 polio workers are participating in the campaign, which will continue until July 12. For their security, 7,000 police personnel have been assigned across different parts of the metropolis.

The commissioner had recently instructed polio teams to give special attention to children who had been missed in previous rounds and to cases where parents had refused vaccination.