Two new polio cases detected

file photo

KARACHI / MIRAMSHAH: Two new polio cases have been detected in the country.

An 18-month-old girl of a family which had shifted to #Karachi from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in recent months is the latest victim of polio virus, sources in the Sindh health department and Prime Minister’s #Polio Cell confirmed to Dawn on Monday.

They identified the girl as Hafsa, daughter of Marjan, a resident of Manghopir’s Sultanabad area, administratively in Gadap Town, where two cases were reported early this year.

Five polio cases have been found in Sindh so far this year, all of them in Karachi.
The other polio case reported on Monday is from North Waziristan, which is home to 160,000 unvaccinated children since August 2012.

The agency has recorded 41cases in the countrywide tally of 61 in 2014 so far. Six cases have been found in other areas of Fata, which is directly governed by the federal government.
Nine cases have been found in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa — five in Bannu and four in Peshawar.
Meanwhile, the army has started giving oral polio vaccine to children in North Waziristan for the first time since the Taliban banned vaccination there, according to sources.

The army has been holding free medical camps where children are being administered polio vaccines. Residents said people also brought vaccines from Bannu to Miramshah and other parts of the agency.
In Boya, Dosal and Esha villages, children have been vaccinated in the camps where people said they had not seen vaccinators since the Taliban banned the campaign.

Local authorities said that they had also planned medical camps in Kajoorai, Razmak, Dattakhel and Tall to offer diagnostic and treatment services to people by trained doctors and staff of the army.
Source: Dawn News