Pakistan to learn from India’s polio success

Pak to learn from India’s polio success

A nine-member Pakistani delegation led by Shahnaz Wazir Ali, social activist and special assistant to Pakistani prime Minister, will visit India to learn from the country’s experience in eradicating polio. The delegation will hold talks with health ministry officials on Thursday and witness a pulse polio camp in Ghaziabad. With not a single case of polio reported from India for more than a year now, the country was taken off the list of polio-endemic countries by the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently. However, neighbouring countries – Afghanistan and Pakistan – and Nigeria are still fighting the polio virus. As a preventive measure, India has set up polio booths at Attari and Wagah borderd touching Pakistan where small children are immunised before entering India. Pakistan’s polio figures rose from 144 in 2010 to 198 in 2011, while already 16 cases have been reported thus far this year. It is believed that the Sindh region in Karachi has the highest cases every year due to migration from neighbouring areas. Meanwhile, probably inspired by India’s immunisation drives, particularly Pulse Polio, the United Nations World Health Assembly (WHA) has decided to hold World Immunisation Week each year in the last week of April. The WHA has also urged member states to eliminate the non-immunised areas and maintain very high population immunity against polio viruses through routine immunisation programmes and, where necessary, supplementary immunisation activities. They were also urged to maintain vigilance for poliovirus importations, and the emergence of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus.