Ministry shouldn’t let up on anti-polio, measles drive

When Public Health and Sanitation Director Shahnaaz Sharif speaks out about a disease outbreak — any disease — people sit up and listen. And when he said a deadly epidemic of measles and polio had been detected in refugee camps in the north of the country, his teams were already on the ground meeting the challenge head-on.

Measles is highly contagious disease and can open up the body to other undesirable complications such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, ear infections, blindness and death if it is not treated immediately. Experts say the disease is so contagious that if a person has it, 90 per cent of the people close to that person who are not immune will also be infected!