UAE polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan scales new heights

ISLAMABAD: The U.A.E. massive campaign to vaccinate three million children under five against poliomyelitis (polio) in Pakistan was successful, the U.A.E. Project to Assist Pakistan (U.A.E. PAP) has announced. The large-scale preventive health initiative, under the slogan ''Health for All - Better Future'', is being carried out on the directives of the U.A.E. President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and comes as part of the initiative of His Highness General Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the U.A.E. Armed Forces, to eradicate polio in the world. The campaign is a humanitarian initiative aimed at vaccinating 3.643 million Pakistani children against polio over a period of three months - June, August and September, 2014. Sheikh Mohamed had previously donated 440 million (around US$120 million) as a contribution in support of the global effort to eradicate polio by 2018, with special focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan. This contribution is the second one to be provided by Sheikh Mohamed for delivering life-saving vaccines to children all over the world. U.A.E. PAP management said that June had seen the vaccination of 3,048,669 children in 23 districts in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and other tribal areas in Pakistan. It said that the overwhelming success of the campaign to reach the three million mark in the first month of the three-month initiative proves the U.A.E.'s affective efforts, under the leadership of Sheikh Khalifa, to deliver its noble, humanitarian goals and improve health wellbeing of people and health prevention against diseases and epidemics. U.A.E. PAP also stressed on the leading role the U.A.E. is playing in assisting needy, poor people and supporting international efforts and UN programmes to protect communities from diseases and epidemic as well as crises and disasters and secure decent life to them. ''Sheikh Mohamed's initiative is important for Pakistan given the fact that the targeted regions are the world's largest and deeply plagued by polio but indicators of significant success have emerged from the first day of the campaign,'' U.A.E. PAP noted. Mobile units have overcome geographical challenges that prevented previous local and international campaigns from reaching these areas, which accounted for 95 per cent of Pakistan’s polio cases in the past six months, resulting in wider spread of the disease into other areas. Mobile medical teams have ventured into difficult remote mountainous regions to deliver vaccines. However, the U.A.E. efforts were fruitful thanks to the good planning, perfect field implementation, concerted coordination between the U.A.E. PAP and other stakeholders including command of Pakistani army, local and federal Pakistani health authorities, and the World Health Organisation. Pakistan is one of three countries where polio is still categorised as an endemic viral infection. WHO warned of the polio situation in Pakistan which reported 198 cases in 2011, the highest in ten years, compared to 58 cases in 2012 and 93 in 2013. 99 cases were registered in the first seven months of the current year compared to 24 in the same period last year. – Emirates News Agency, WAM – Read more: http://www.wam.ae/en/news/emirates/1395268290203.html