PAKISTAN WORKING ON POLIO

At the Inayat Foundation Academy for the Deaf in Lahore, Pakistan, children watch attentively as a teacher uses sign language to explain what polio is and the need to be immunized against it.
Afterward, members of the Rotary Club of Lahore Sharqi (East), Punjab, give the children pencils, badges, and other items bearing the words Polio-Free Pakistan .
The presentation, arranged by the club during Pakistan’s National Immunization Days (NIDs) 15-17 February, illustrates the country’s determination to reach every segment of society in the drive to eradicate the disease.
An estimated two million people on 90,000 immunization teams took part in the NIDs, vaccinating about 35 million children against polio. The effort marked the debut of the new bivalent oral polio vaccine in Pakistan, also in use in the other three remaining polio-endemic countries of Afghanistan, India, and Nigeria.
Pakistan PolioPlus Committee Chair Aziz Memon described the massive campaign as “trying to cover every nook and corner of the country,” adding that “we are committed to a polio-free Pakistan.”
Rotarians and other members of the family of Rotary teamed up with government agencies and businesses to support the NIDs in several ways:

• Local TV stations ran an End Polio Now message to help boost public awareness.
• Mobilink and Warid Telecom sent text messages to millions of subscribers, urging them to call a toll-free number to report areas not reached by immunization teams.
• Pakistan Postal Services, the National Highways and Motorway Police, and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority provided immunization sites to vaccinate children who otherwise would have been missed.
• Rotarians organized a conference for Pakistan’s Muslim leaders, who declared their full support for polio eradication. Announcements were made in all mosques and Islamic schools, urging that every child be immunized.
• The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication in Pakistan, which has received significant funding from Rotary, was recently awarded a certificate of appreciation by the World Health Organization for high-quality diagnostic services to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The lab has achieved a 100 percent proficiency rating for several years and never scored below 99 percent.
• Rotary and Coca-Cola Pakistan joined in promoting polio immunization on 20 prominent billboards across the country. Waqas Advertisers provided an additional 20 billboards in Karachi.
• More than 100 journalists were given background training on health issues in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to encourage coverage of these topics, especially polio.

Rehana Baray, president of the Lahore Sharqi (East) club, was part of a team that immunized 2,000 children during the NIDs.
“Next time you serve the drops, please do look into the eyes of the child,” she says. “Then thank God that you belong to a great and rare organization.”