With three cases of polio P1 virus and one of polio P4 virus affecting children in the Capital this year, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Saturday exhorted parents to bring all children up to five years of age to polio booths across the city this Sunday for administration of the anti-polio vaccine.
Ms. Dikshit made the appeal during the launch of another round of Pulse Polio campaign in Delhi where she administered anti-polio drops to a number of children at the Delhi Secretariat.
Speaking at the programme that was also attended by Delhi Health Minister Kiran Walia and a 50-member Rotarian delegation from Britain and Ireland, Ms. Dikshit said Delhi is all set to eliminate polio as not even a single case has been reported after the launch of the last phase of immunisation. Under the next phase on Sunday, she said, 25 lakh children would be administered anti-polio drops.
The Chief Minister claimed that the last phase of Intensified Pulse Polio Immunisation Programme was successfully implemented on September 12 with 24.77 lakh children immunised and over 47.29 lakh households visited during house-to-house surveys.
Asserting that the Delhi Government would ensure that the Capital remains protected from the polio virus, the Chief Minister said Delhi has shown better results in curbing the disease. She also recalled that it was Delhi that had initiated the Pulse Polio immunisation programme in 1994 and launched house-to-house “search and immunization’’ in 1999.
Prof. Walia said 8,200 polio booths would be set up across Delhi on Sunday for the vaccination programme. Around 35,000 workers and employees of the Health Department would be deployed to ensure that the programme covers the maximum number of children.
Thereafter, nearly 17,000 workers in 9,200 teams would visit different colonies including slum and jhuggi-jhonpri clusters to cover left-over cases and administer anti-polio drops to those children.
