July 2019: Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province conducts 4-day polio campaign

In response to a surge in new cases in July, Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province conducted a four-day polio campaign this month—targeting 614,590 children in Torghar and Shangla and the surrounding districts in Hazara and Malakand divisions. Meanwhile, Balochistan province, which saw two new polio cases in early July, launched a six-day vaccination drive in six districts on July 22, targeting 500,000 children. Reuters reported earlier in the month that parents suspicious of campaigns in the country have been falsely marking their children as vaccinated by obtaining and using special markers used by health workers to identify the fingers of vaccinated children—raising doubts over the quality of vaccination reporting. Pakistan has seen 45 polio cases so far in 2019, compared to the 12 cases recorded in all of 2018, with most new cases reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. DAWN; DAWN; Reuters