The World Health Organization (WHO) has decided to extend travel restrictions on Pakistan for an additional three months due to the ongoing risk of a polio outbreak, as reported by ARY News.
This decision was reached during a meeting of the World Health Organization's Emergency Committee for the 2005 International Health Regulations, a body responsible for monitoring the global spread of the poliovirus.
The committee expressed concerns regarding Pakistan's efforts to combat polio and its ability to reach a significant number of children. It also highlighted the challenges faced by both Pakistan and Afghanistan in their attempts to eradicate polio, according to ARY News.
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Recent favourable environmental tests in Peshawar and Karachi have underscored the persistent risk of a polio epidemic in Pakistan, as noted by the committee. Furthermore, the committee reported the identification of a new case of Wild Poliovirus Type 1 (WP1) in Pakistan in 2023, bringing the year's total to 2 cases. Both cases were reported in the Bannu district of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.
Despite the vaccination of an additional 160,000 children in southern KP through an action plan, the committee emphasised the continued challenges in the region, including political instability, security concerns necessitating police patrols for frontline workers, and vaccination refusals, as reported by ARY News.
In Afghanistan, the emergency committee disclosed the occurrence of five new WPV1 cases in Nangarhar province since the previous meeting. It also warned that any setback in Afghanistan's polio eradication efforts poses a risk to Pakistan due to high population movement between the two countries.
The committee issued a warning about the persistent risk of WPV1 re-emergence in the southern region due to ongoing transmission in eastern Afghanistan, cross-border transmission into Pakistan, and a substantial population of unvaccinated children in southern Afghanistan.
As per WHO's International Travel and Health guidelines, all travellers should receive the complete polio vaccine. Residents and visitors staying longer than 4 weeks from affected areas should receive an additional dose of either oral polio vaccine (OPV) or inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) within 4 weeks to 12 months after travel, as reported by ARY News.
(With inputs from ANI)
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