ISLAMABAD (Web Desk) - Pakistan’s National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) said on Tuesday that over 8 million children were vaccinated on the first day of a week-long anti-polio drive that aims to target 31 million children across the country, urging parents to get their children inoculated.
The sub-national campaign is being carried out in 115 districts across Pakistan. The drive will be carried out from Sept 21 till Sept. 27, with over 273,000 polio workers going door-to-door to vaccinate children.
“Around 8.325 million children were vaccinated on the first day of the campaign,” the NEOC said.
The NEOC said 2.3 million children have been administered polio drops across 13 Punjab districts, while 3 million children have been inoculated across 30 districts of Sindh.
In the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province’s 37 districts, 2.18 million children have been provided anti-polio drops while more than 594,000 children have been inoculated across 30 districts of Balochistan.
Around 151,000 children were administered polio drops in Islamabad while over 41,000 were given the dose in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region on the first day.
The ongoing vaccination drive is being synchronized with vaccination activities in neighboring Afghanistan in an effort to interrupt cross-border transmission, according to Pakistani health authorities.