Over 16,000 Pakistani kids not given polio drops

Aug 04, 2011 |

IANS

Islamabad

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Over 16,000 children were not given polio drops in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province due to parents' misconception, officials said.

"In the last three-day campaign in July, 16,721 children could not be immunised mainly because of the parents' misperceptions about the efficacy of the (polio drops)," Dawn quoted an official as saying.

Officials said that in at least 23 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, they had been regularly registering refusal cases.

The media report said that some parents refuse vaccination arguing that the polio drops are a ploy to turn the children impotent.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Area (Fata) together recorded 100 of the total 142 cases in the country last year.

Jan Baz Afridi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's polio officer, said they have brought down refusal cases from 26,000 to 16,000 during the past six months.

"The refusal cases have not increased, but we have strengthened our reporting system to record every child. Earlier, the system of reporting was not so strong...," he was quoted as saying.

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