The Pakistan’s polio program on Saturday announced another child being paralysed by the wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) in Shikarpur district of Sindh, bringing the total number of cases in the country this year to four.
The regional reference laboratory for polio eradication at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Islamabad notified that WPV1 was detected from stool samples collected from a 2.5-year-old child from Birkhan Union Council (UC) of Shikarpur.
On the other hand, Polio Eradication Programme’s national coordinator Dr Shahzad Baig stepped down from his post due to “personal reasons”.
Meanwhile, health authorities assigned the work of the coordinator of the National Emergency Operation Center (NEOC) for polio eradication to the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations, and Coordination (NHS, R&C) Joint Secretary Captain (retd) Anwar-ul-Haq, in addition to his own duties with immediate effect until further notice.
Providing details about the fourth polio case, the program officials stated that the child had onset paralysis on May 11. Genetic sequencing of the virus isolated from his samples revealed that it is genetically linked to the imported YB3A cluster.
This genetic cluster disappeared from Pakistan in mid-2021 but remained in circulation in Afghanistan. It was reintroduced in Pakistan following cross-border transmission last year.
It is worth mentioning here that it is the first polio case from Sindh this year as earlier three cases have been reported from the Dera Bugti, Chaman and Killa Abdullah areas of Balochistan.
Similarly, poliovirus has so far been found in 153 environmental samples in 39 districts across Pakistan.
Coordinator to the Prime Minister on National Health Services Dr Malik Mukhtar Bharat has expressed sorrow over another Pakistani child being affected by a preventable disease.
He emphasised the government’s regular efforts to bring vaccines to people’s doorsteps and highlighted the deployment of teams from the National and Provincial Polio Emergency Operations Centres to conduct a full case investigation.
