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PM vows to make Pakistan polio-free
APPISLAMABAD - Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has expressed confidence that the government has adequate capacity and is undertaking suitable measures to soon make Pakistan polio-free and reverse the trend of spread of polio virus.
“We owe this to our people, our children and the world community,” the prime minister said in a message on the World Polio Day. “I exhort all parents and caregivers to play their part by helping the government in reaching every child for oral polio vaccination so that our future generations grow physically healthy and free of polio.”
Terming polio a global scourge with the potential to cause widespread damage, the prime minister said that it was a humanitarian issue requiring coordinated supranational preventive and remedial action. He said that the government was aware of the grave situation that the number of children paralysed by wild polio virus this year was the highest in a decade.
He said that his government had devised a National Emergency Action Plan 2014 aimed at eradicating polio from Pakistan that was duly approved by Executive Committee of National Economic Council and fully funded till 2018. He said that the National Polio Eradication Plan was supervised by a dedicated focal person based in the office of the prime minister, who consistently monitors activity and performance of responsible personnel operating at federal, provincial, district and union council levels.
The prime minister said that Emergency Operations Cells had been established in two provinces that would soon be expanded to other provinces. “Our anti-polio efforts are based upon a Pakistan specific, contextually designed implementation strategy,” he said. He said well-designed anti-polio drives were periodically conducted countrywide during which anti-polio vaccines were orally administered along with creating awareness about the hazards of the disease as well as methods of preventing it.
“My government has specifically solicited the support for conducting widespread anti-polio vaccination from prominent religious authorities through obtaining Sharia-based legal pronouncements (Fatwa).” He said that cooperation of media and civil society was also obtained and channelised to strengthen this vital national exercise. “I can assure that we are undertaking suitable measures to curb the current trend and I am confident that we possess adequate capacity to reverse it and soon make Pakistan polio free,” the prime minister said.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk