The Canadian government highly appreciates the progress made by the Pakistan Polio Program in the fight against polio and look forward to exploring further opportunities of strengthening its partnership with the program, said the Canadian High Commissioner to Pakistan H.E Perry John Calderwood.

The Canadian High Commissioner to Pakistan made these observations while visiting the National Emergency Operation Centre for polio eradication in Islamabad. Congratulating the Pakistani team and development partners including UNICEF, WHO, Rotary International, CDC and BMGF he said “I am impressed by the progress made by Pakistan Polio program and hope that it will end the transmission of the virus in Pakistan.”

The High Commissioner was accompanied by Director of Global Affairs Canada Gloria Wiseman who is currently visiting Islamabad from Ottawa to review various development programs funded by the government of Canada. Development counsellor for Pakistan Daniel Joly and first secretary Kiril Iordanov were also accompanying the delegation.

The Prime Minister’s focal person for Polio Eradication, Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq welcomed the delegation by saying that “our team highly values the contributions and sustained commitment shown by Canadian government towards eradication of polio from Pakistan. We have made tremendous gains over the past few years in the fight against polio virus and are hopeful that our committed teams and partners will leave no stone unturned to bring an end to polio virus transmission from Pakistan.”

EOC Coordinator Dr Rana Safdar briefed the delegation about the progress and performance of Pakistan Polio Program. He explained the working of emergency operation centres, surveillance mechanism, risk management, accountability framework and coordination mechanism within country and with the Afghanistan team. Dr Rana thanked the Canadian government for their continued support to polio initiative in Pakistan.

The delegation visited the data control room at EOC which is the hub of real-time data collection of the Polio initiative. Later the delegation was taken to cold storage facility and laboratory at National Institute of Health to showcase the cold chain management and sampling of various specimens at the Lab.