ISLAMABAD: 2 additional polio cases have been recorded from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, using the tally for the present yr to nineteen. Almost five months of the year have passed, but the amount of polio cases found in KP has achieved 8 which is equal to the cases recorded in the province in 2016.
Only 2 cases a year ago and one in 2017 were recorded from KP.
The current cases had been recorded from Dera Ismail Khan and Bannu. An official of Polio Virology Laboratory at the National Institute of Health ( NIH), requesting anonymity, declared that a nine-year-old girl, whose examples were collected on May 5, was infected with poliovirus in D. I. Khan. He said one more case of a 17-month- old girl was reported from Bannu. Her samples were collected on May 3.
“As the incubation period of the virus is nearly three weeks so it has been proved that each the infants have been infected with polio,” he declared.
When contacted, Prime Minister’s Focal Person on Polio Babar Bin Atta verified the recent 2 cases. When asked how a nine-year-old girl was infected with polio, he said: “Sometimes it happens .”
“I remember that a 26-year-old foreigner came to Kalam in 2008 and had a severe fever. Later it was verified that he was infected with poliovirus. However, he was not paralyzed as the virus generally fails to cripple people aged a lot more than 5 years,” he declared. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the nations in the world from where polio cases are still being recorded. So for this yr, a complete of 19 polio cases — 8 from KP, 5 from tribal districts of KP, 3 from Punjab and 3 from Sindh — have been reported.
