By Zahiruddin
CHITRAL: The district coordinator of EPI Program Chitral Dr. Fayaz Rumi has said that all types of arrangements have been made to reach 69400 children in 60994 households of the twenty four union councils of the district during the anti-measles campaign scheduled to start from 16thOctober.
Briefing the local media in his office here on Saturday, he said that 131 teams had been constituted for 41 fixed centres and 35 mobile teams will go the far-flung villages which were away from such centres.
He said that as per standard of World Health Organization, the prevalence of the disease must be only 5 in a population of one million but in our country, it has jumped to 299 during the current year as it was 169 during the preceding year.
Dr. Rumi said that in Chitral, the outbreak of measles had been reported in the year 2017 in Arandu while during the current year, as many as 48 solitary cases had been reported from different parts of the district which was a disquieting figure and signified alarming situation.
Regarding the importance and need of the campaign, he said that 90 percent vaccination coverage is essential for an area while it was 61 percent during the routine immunization practice carried out by the health department which necessitated special immunization days to remove the deficiency.
He said that all the necessary kits and vaccines had been transported to all the village councils of the district including Baroghil valley which had received snow last week.
For the mass awareness about the impending campign, he said that the prayer leaders of the mosques and community leaders of the civil society have been mobilized while announcements will be made by the employees of the department through megaphones.
He said that for supervision, each union council has been entrusted to a monitor while a cluster of three union councils will be supervised by another monitor and the twenty union councils have been divided into eight clusters.
