LAHORE: Health department teams are using camels to reach farHung villages in the desert areas of south Punjab to inoculate children in the ongoing anti-measles campaign.

Health Services Director General Dr Munir Ahmad said on Wednesday that it was very difficult to reach the targeted children residing in small villages in Choolistan desert near Bahawalpur through usual means of transportation.

`Vaccination of each and every child is a must to eradicate measles from the country. For the purpose, it was decided the teams will use camels to reach such areas. So far, the health department teams have vaccinated 10.45 million children in the age group of six months to seven years across the province. The ratio of coverage is 110 per cent,` he said.

Dr Munir said the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Unicef had provided technical support for the campaign, while international donor GAVI provided the vaccine.

Sharing data on big districts with reporters, Dr Ahmad said that since launch of the campaign on Oct 15, health department teams have inoculated 1,446,722 children in Lahore, 649,724 in Multan, 631,770 in Rawalpindi, 963,112 in Faisalabad, 486,288 in Bahawalpur and 692,015 children in Gujranwala.

He appealed to the parents if they had still not got their children vaccinated, they should immediately benefit from the free facility and get inoculated them against measles.