PESHAWAR: Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) has planned to focus on low-performing union councils in polio immunisation campaign starting from April 21 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

EOC has identified 276 priority union councils where quality of campaign has not been up to the mark in the past.

Officials said that the campaign would be aimed at improving quality and reducing the number of low performing union councils where the tally of missed children and refusal cases was 45,957. Theysaid that efforts would be made to ensure that the vaccinators reach every child below five years and enhance their immunity against poliovirus.

About 80 of these union councils are situated in Peshawar, the provincial capital, and 26 in Khyber tribal district but all districts have two or three while some have even 10 and 20 such union councils.

The low performing union councils are those, whose lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) has failed multiple times, warranting special focus to deal with the issues. The post-campaign monitoring has also shown that these union councils have operational issues that need to be resolved.

`We have been recording more than two per cent missed children, who remain unvaccinated in each and every hoseto-house drive,` said officials.

They said that the campaignwould be run in all districts but separate preparations were being made on for the union councils where situation was not up to a desired level.

`There are arrangements for focused trainings for proper separate pre-campaign backed by micro plans, quality human resources, identification and nomination of doctors and other senior programme staff to support pre and post campaign monitoring,` said officials. They said that enhanced monitoring was planned for those union councils where 31 monitors from provincial EOC and almost 70 monitors from districts would be deployed.

According to EOC`s statistics, in the last polio campaign, which was run from Feb 3 to Feb 5, vaccinators covered 5,970,196 (93 per cent) of the total target 6,450,977children, missing 116,813, including 97,743 children, who were una-vailable when vaccinators visited their homes and 19,070 others, whose parents refused vaccination. The frontline workers have been taking part in the campaign despite potential threats to their lives but less than two per cent unvaccinated children have been the main reason behind the non-eradication of the virus.

In 2024, 20 people, including 16 police constables, lost their lives in terrorist attacks during anti-polio campaigns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Fifty three people, including 43 policemen, were injured in such attacks.

In 2025, a policeman on polio duty was killed in Khyber tribal district, while another constable (Levies official) was shot dead in Bajaur tribal district. Overall, 112 people, more than half of whom were policemen, have been killed during pollo cam-paigns, and more than 300 have been injured in the province since 2012.

Pakistan has reported six polio cases, including four from Sindh and one each from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab in the current year.

Last year,the country reported 74 cases including 27 in Balochistan, 23 in Sindh, 22 in Khyber Pakhtunlchwa and one each in Punjab and Islamabad.

Officials said that poliovirus was detected in sewage samples of South Waziristan Lower and Upper recently.

`We hope that chief secretary`s directives to district administration and police will help us to cope with refusals and missed children. Once we are able to ensure quality campaign, the poliovirus will vanish and the money spent on polio eradication will be diverted to other child health issues,` they said.