[DAWN] The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
health department has begun a 12 days immunisation campaign in the province to protect children against measles.
During the campaign, one dose of anti-measles vaccine will be administered to 9.6 million children from six months to 10 years of age across the board.
A total of 5,000 teams, 1,075 area chiefs and 202 zonal supervisors are part of the exercise during which oral polio
...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
vaccine (OPV) will also be given to the children under the age of five years in all seven Southern districts of the province, including Kohat, Hangu, Karak, Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Tank and Dera Ismail Khan
... the Pearl of Pashtunistan ...
, and two high-risk union councils in Nowshera district.
In all, 4,341 teams will vaccinate 1,201,466 children against polio. Dr Jan Baz Afridi, deputy director at the provincial Expanded Programme on Immunisation, told Dawn that the campaign would help the province achieve the Millennium Development Goals on healthcare. He said the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation and the provincial government supported the children's immunisation.
The EPI official said the provincial health departments tried to control measles through patchy vaccination and outbreak response campaigns targeting different age groups with available vaccines for routine programme resulting in high incidence of measles.
"1,008 measles cases were reported in 2010, 2,702 in 2011 and 10,000 from Jan 2012 to Feb 2013. During the Jan 2012-Feb 2013 period, more than 500 deaths by the disease were reported prompting authorities to launch aggressive immunisation of children," he said.