Pakistan says over 44.3 million children vaccinated as year’s first anti-polio drive concludes

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani health authorities have vaccinated over 44.3 million children during the week-long anti-polio nationwide campaign, the first of this year which concluded last week, the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) said on Monday.

Pakistan launched the first anti-polio nationwide campaign on Feb. 2 to target over 45 million children. Over 400,000 trained polio workers took part in the door-to-door campaign to vaccinate children under the age of five against the disease, the government said.

“More than 44.3 million children were administered polio vaccine drops during the campaign,” the NEOC said in a statement.

The anti-polio campaign, which concluded on Sunday, saw over 22.9 million vaccinated in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province. In Sindh, over 10.5 million children were vaccinated, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) 7.13 million, in Balochistan 2.36 million, in Islamabad over 455,000, in Gilgit-Baltistan over 261,000 and in Azad Kashmir over 673,000 in seven days, data shared by the NEOC said.

The center said that the campaign was conducted in Pakistan and Afghanistan simultaneously, the only two countries were the disease remains endemic.