TANK, Pakistan: It began with a tiny lesion on Muhammad Hamza’s cheek last month. Soon, most of the 12-year-old boy’s body was covered in sores the size of large coins and speckled with blood. He complained that he had difficulty breathing and eating.
A doctor in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal district diagnosed Hamza with leishmaniasis, a disease caused by a parasite injected by the bite of bloodsucking sandflies that can lead to deep ulcers that take months to heal and cause severe scarring, often on the face.
In the last six months, 28,000 cases of the disease have been reported in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to figures from the ministry of health. At least 5,000 of these cases have emerged in the erstwhile semi-autonomous tribal regions that were merged into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa last year after a parliamentary vote.
Previously, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, as they used to be called, were governed for over 150 years by colonial era tribal laws and provided a haven for militants, gun runners and drug smugglers. Without provincial status, the area also suffered from a lack of national investment in education, telecommunication and, above all, health care.
Doctors from the area said health authorities were ill-prepared to control the outbreak of leishmaniasis and a shortage of medicines had driven the number of cases further up in the last few weeks. Health Secretary Jamil Farooq said the World Health Organization had donated 10,000 glucantime injections, but the shortage persisted. WHO officials could not be reached for comment.
Farooq said the provincial government had adopted a two-pronged policy to tackle the disease: preemptive measures such as fumigation and curative treatment with a course of injections, or by cauterizing sores to kill the parasites.
“The dilemma is that signs of leishmaniasis appear after three months,” Farooq said, adding that the government was also planning to launch an awareness campaign about the spread of the disease and the effective use of insecticides.
The sandflies that spread the parasites are carried by animals as well as people. They often breed on waste land and in rubbish and infest cracks and crevices in people’s homes. From there, they emerge during night hours from late spring to autumn and bite exposed parts of the body like ears, noses, cheeks and hands while people sleep, Dr. Rahim Dawar, the top health official of the South Waziristan tribal district, explained.
Nasib Shah Shinwari, a tribesman from Khyber tribal district where the largest number of leishmaniasis cased have been reported, said his nine year old daughter contracted the disease six months ago but was now recovering after starting a course of injections.
“Yes, we are getting injections from the District Headquarters Hospital in Landikotal,” he said, referring to the main town in Khyber tribal district. “Sometimes the hospital staff complain of medicine shortage. But she is recovering.”
Hamza’s father Ghulam Rasool said he was unable to find the required leishmaniasis medicines at the District Headquarters Hospital in Tank, the gateway district to the volatile South Waziristan, and had to purchase them at a higher price from a private medical store.
Tribal elder Malik Qabil Khan said locals were planning to convene a jirga, or village assembly, next week to chalk out a strategy on how to tackle the outbreak and build pressure on the administration.
Parasitic skin disease leaves thousands scarred in Pakistan's northwest
Parasitic skin disease leaves thousands scarred in Pakistan's northwest
- 28,000 cases of leishmaniasis reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the last six months
- Doctors say shortage of medicines has driven number of cases further up in the last few weeks
Pakistan launches final polio drive of 2025 as official calls disease persistence an embarrassment
- Sindh chief minister says Muslim-majority countries have eliminated polio by ensuring universal vaccination
- Sindh chief minister says Muslim-majority countries have eliminated polio by ensuring universal vaccination
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan launched its final nationwide polio vaccination campaign of 2025 on Monday as a senior government official described the continued presence of the disease in the country as an embarrassment and said the only way to eradicate it was to vaccinate every child under the age of five.
The campaign, which will run from Dec. 15 to Dec. 21, aims to administer oral polio drops to more than 45 million children across the country, according to the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC).
Pakistan is one of only two countries in the world, along with Afghanistan, where polio has not yet been eradicated.
“There is only one way to eliminate this disease, and the entire world has adopted it: every child under the age of five must be given two drops of the polio vaccine,” Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said while inaugurating the campaign in Karachi.
“There is no other way.”
Shah said it was “quite embarrassing” that polio continued to persist in Pakistan, noting that around 30 children had been infected so far this year, including nine cases in Sindh province.
He added that many Muslim-majority countries had successfully eliminated polio by ensuring universal vaccination of children.
To ensure the safety of vaccination teams, authorities have deployed around 21,000 security personnel nationwide, including about 1,000 women, to accompany frontline polio workers during the campaign, Shah said.
According to the NEOC, more than 23 million children will be vaccinated in Punjab, over 10.6 million in Sindh, about 7.2 million in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and more than 2.6 million in Balochistan.
The campaign also targets around 460,000 children in Islamabad, 228,000 in Gilgit-Baltistan and more than 760,000 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
Health authorities have urged parents to cooperate with vaccination teams, open their doors to polio workers and ensure that all children under five receive two drops of the vaccine, while also completing routine immunization schedules for infants up to 15 months old.
Pakistan has struggled for decades to eradicate polio due to misinformation, vaccine hesitancy and security challenges, despite repeated nationwide immunization drives.
