RAWALPINDI: A special polio vaccination campaign will begin across 13 districts of Punjab on Monday (today), with nearly one million children under five targeted for vaccination in Rawalpindi district. More than 8,000 team members will participate in the campaign across the district.

Chief Executive Officer, District Health Authority Rawalpindi, Dr Ehsan Ghani, said ensuring access to polio vaccination for every child under five was the foremost priority. He said children would be vaccinated through door-to-door teams as well as at transit points and hospitals across Rawalpindi.

Dr Ghani said the campaign, being conducted from Sept 21 to 27, would give special attention to high-risk areas and locations with significant population movement.

Given the size and mobility of Rawalpindi’s population, he said, reaching children who might be away from their homes due to travel or temporary movement was particularly important.

“Population movement remains an important challenge for the polio programme, as families moving from one area to another can make it difficult to ensure continuous access to vaccination,” Dr Ghani said.

“Transit vaccination is therefore an important part of our strategy to ensure that no child travelling through Rawalpindi is missed.”

“No child should miss polio vaccination simply because they are travelling,” Dr Ghani said, urging parents to cooperate with vaccination teams and ensure that all children under five receive polio drops during the campaign.

He said mobile, fixed and transit vaccination teams had been deployed across Rawalpindi. The teams would also focus on reaching children who might not be present at home during door-to-door visits, ensuring that they were followed up and vaccinated.

Dr Ghani said special attention would be given to campaign monitoring, field supervision and the immediate follow-up of missed children in Rawalpindi. District teams would work in coordination to identify children who were missed during household visits and ensure that they were vaccinated before the campaign concluded.

Across Punjab, more than 10 million children are being targeted during the campaign, with a total of 39,774 vaccination teams comprising mobile, fixed and transit teams participating in the campaign.

The campaign is being conducted across full or partial areas of 13 districts. In Lahore, vaccination activities will continue for seven days through Sept 27, while campaign activities in the other targeted districts will continue for four days.

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2026