Abbottabad launches polio drive targeting 217,917 children

The deputy commissioner of Abbottabad, Hameedullah Khan, inaugurated the district's national anti-polio campaign on Friday by administering drops to children under five, with health teams assigned to vaccinate 217,917 children across the district, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

According to APP, 1,685 teams have been constituted to cover 54 union councils. The deployment consists of 1,570 mobile teams working door to door, 65 fixed teams at set points, 50 transit teams at places where families pass through and five roaming teams.

The report did not state how long the campaign will run in the district, how many children were covered on the first day, or how the coverage target was calculated.

Pakistan is one of the two countries where wild poliovirus transmission has never been interrupted, and repeated rounds of vaccination are used to reach children under five. Campaigns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have in recent years faced both refusals by some families and security risks to vaccinators, which is why transit and roaming teams are deployed alongside house-to-house visits.

In Abbottabad, the district administration framed the exercise as a routine round, with the deputy commissioner personally giving the first drops at the launch. No further details of the launch were carried in the report.

The second outlet carrying Abbottabad coverage on the same day, UrduPoint, reported separately that eight government schools in the city had received hockey kits, an unrelated item.