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Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday kicked off a three-day nationwide polio eradication drive amid the resurgence of the virus in the country.
Speaking at a ceremony held in Islamabad, Sharif said that a nationwide drive was being inaugurated to overcome the resurfacing of the polio cases, The Express Tribune newspaper reported. The Pakistani premier stated that floods in the summer season had disrupted the national drive, but despite all those difficulties, the polio workers carried out their responsibility with commitment. Pakistan was among the few countries where polio cases had resurfaced, he added. This remark comes amid resurfacing of the polio cases in Pakistan, raising concerns among World Health Organisation (WHO) and other stakeholders. The thirty-third meeting of the Emergency Committee under the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) on the international spread of poliovirus was convened by the WHO Director-General in October last year. The Emergency Committee reviewed the data on wild poliovirus (WPV1) and circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses (cVDPV) in the context of global eradication of WPV and cessation of outbreaks. During the review, technical updates were received about the situation in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. The committee expressed concern that Pakistan has reported several WPV1 cases from the southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. The committee noted that although the ongoing WPV1 outbreak in Pakistan led to a risk of spillover into Afghanistan, there is no evidence of cross-border transmission to date in 2022. (ANI)
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