KA RACHI: Health authorities in coordination with the city administration have planned another week-long polio campaign beginning from Monday, officials said on Thursday.

They said some 2.2 million children, aged less than five years, would be vaccinated in 188 union councils of the metropolis for which 9,000 teams would go door to door.

In a meeting presided over by Karachi Commissioner Ejaz Khan, of ficials said arrangements had already been made to provide desired security cover to polio workers. Besides, an official said, `there will be a strong monitoring mechanism through the Emergency Operation Centre (EOC)in Sindh and the partner staff.

He said the children who missed the campaign `regularly` would be specifically focused on.

The Sindh EOC lately admitted that there were 3,000 `persistently missed children` whose parents always refused to get them vaccinated against polio, which was the biggest challenge for polio eradication efforts in Sindh.

Sindh EOC coordinator Fayaz Jatoi said some 80,000 out of 8.5 million children could not be vaccinated during the last polio drive in the province. `Of them, around 50,000 were not available at their homes, while the number of refusal cases was around 18,000.

Of the 20 polio cases recorded across Pakistan last year, at least eight were reported from Sindh alone. In 2015, 54 cases of polio were reported in the country while some 306 polio cases had been reported the previous year.