Quetta, Pakistan launches five-day polio campaign as officials find rare strain

The southwestern city of Quetta, capital of the Balochistan province in Pakistan, has launched a new five-day polio immunization campaign for children under five years of age after sewage samples were found to contain a rare strain of the virus, according to local officials.

Muslim clerics were also recruited by local officials to promote the immunizations for 400,000 children after past programs were met with resistance and even violence by extremists.

Syed Faisal Ahmed, coordinator of the local Emergency Operation Center, said religious leaders were asking the public to give their children anti-polio drops in theirs sermons in the mosques in rural areas of the Balochistan province.

Pakistan is one of just three countries in the world – along with Afghanistan and Nigeria – that still have endemic polio, a once-common childhood virus that can cause paralysis or death.

In 2016, Pakistan reported a record low of 19 cases, Ahmed said, with only one of them in Balochistan province.

According to Ahmed, the new campaign follows the detection of the rare Type 2 strain of polio in sewage samples taken by the World Health Organization (WHO) in November, with the findings being reported last week.

No cases of the Type 2 strain have been reported in humans in Quetta but it has been added to the vaccine as a precaution. The more common type of polio is Type 1, with no human cases of Type 2 reported for more than a decade.

Although the country has already achieved major goals in terms of fighting the disease, Ahmed still believes there is still more that needs to be done in order to declare Pakistan a polio-free country.

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