Children below two years to be vaccinated across KP.

PESHAWAR -- The health department is launching a province-wide vaccination drive today (on Thursday) to immunise children below two years against vaccine-preventable childhood ailments.

During the past two years, the routine immunisation has badly been suffered due to the preoccupation of vaccinators with Covid-19. About 20 per cent children missed shots, which they required to stay safe from childhood sicknesses, as the health workers were busy in putting brakes on the coronavirus pandemic.

The director of Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), Dr Mohammad Arif Khan, said that the campaign would continue till November 22 during which children with zero dose and newborns at the union council level would be targeted.

According to him, the workers will visit door-to-door in outreach activities to cover the unvaccinated children and also give jabs to the children as per schedule. Children below five years will receive oral polio vaccine during the 12-day drive.

The drive, beginning today, will continue till Nov 22

'During the past two years, we have been engaged in Covid-19 vaccination to safeguard the recipients against the virus. Now, the cases have come down and it seems that the infection would disappear. So far, we have given first dose to 17.55 million people, second to 16.53 million, first booster to 3.22 million and second to 150,000 people,' he said.

The health department has established more than 1,000 vaccination centres and staff has also been deployed at public places. It was a full-scale activity due to which the vaccinators remained busy and routine immunisation suffered.

'In addition, our staff carried out cholera vaccination in the flood-hit districts of the province in view of the exposure of people due to consumption of contaminated water,' said Dr Arif.

He said that 400,000 people would be given oral cholera vaccine in Kohistan, Tank, Dera Ismail and other districts. These districts have recorded cholera cases. 'From October 3 to 15, we ran typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) drive during which children between nine months to 15 years of age were given jabs in...