Peshawar, April 30, 2018: Provincial Emergency Operations Centre Khyber Paktunkhwa is concerned about the news of a child who has died last night because of some medical complications and would like to assure the communities that as reported by a section of media it has nothing to do with Polio Vaccine.

Polio vaccine is the safest vaccine ever developed and over 10 billion doses of OPV and eleven million IPV does have been administered to children in Pakistan and we have received any confirmed report of any reaction among any of the child across the country. It is unfortunate that media is relating this death to the vaccine which is considered safest by the leading medical practitioners of the world and Pakistan.

As per our initial investigations, a child named Rehan son on Zafar, aged 12 months and resident of Gilabad/Bostanabad died last night of medical complications. Provincial EOC has constituted a high powered investigation team to investigatethe matter in detail and report back within 48 hours.

But EOC is confident that Polio vaccine is the safest vaccine and causes no side effects or harm to a child. We would be grateful to the media for not reporting anything which is not factual and wait for the investigations which will give the results within 48 hours.

There were 2781 children were vaccinated with Injectable Polio Vaccine (IPV) in the same UC since the start of the campaign on April23, 2018. A total number of 186459 children in Peshawar received vaccination during the campaign and wehave not received any confirmed reports of any side effects from anywhere. Therefore, let be assured that polio vaccine is safest and does not cause any harm.