18 month old Hafsa, a resident of Sultanabad, Mangho Pir, has recently been diagnosed with polio. Her family shifted from FATA to Karachi a few months ago. On Monday another child was diagnosed with polio in South Waziristan. The total count of polio cases since the beginning of the year now stands at 61. 5 of these cases were reported from Karachi. The rest of Sindh is still polio free, sources report. A majority of the cases emerged from South Waziristan, primarily due to the Taliban’s ban on anti-polio vaccinations. For the first time since the ban was implemented the army has stepped in to monitor the anti-polio drives being organized in South Waziristan. There is a lot of ground to cover in this region of Pakistan given that more than half a million children have not been vaccinated since August 2012.
