ISLAMABAD: Pakistani health authorities have vaccinated over 44.3 million children during the week-long anti-polio nationwide campaign, the first of this year which concluded last week, the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) said on Monday. 

Pakistan launched the first anti-polio nationwide campaign on Feb. 2 to target over 45 million children. Over 400,000 trained polio workers took part in the door-to-door campaign to vaccinate children under the age of five against the disease, the government said. 

“More than 44.3 million children were administered polio vaccine drops during the campaign,” the NEOC said in a statement. 

The anti-polio campaign, which concluded on Sunday, saw over 22.9 million vaccinated in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province. In Sindh, over 10.5 million children were vaccinated, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) 7.13 million, in Balochistan 2.36 million, in Islamabad over 455,000, in Gilgit-Baltistan over 261,000 and in Azad Kashmir over 673,000 in seven days, data shared by the NEOC said. 

The center said that the campaign was conducted in Pakistan and Afghanistan simultaneously, the only two countries were the disease remains endemic. 

Last year, Pakistan reported 31 polio cases, a significant drop from the alarming 74 cases reported in the country in 2024. The South Asian nation reported six cases in 2023 and only one in 2021, but saw a sharp resurgence in 2024.

Pakistan’s polio program began in 1994, but efforts to eradicate the virus have been repeatedly undermined by vaccine misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners who claim that immunization is a foreign plot to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western espionage.

Militant groups have also frequently targeted polio vaccination teams and the security personnel assigned to protect them, often resulting in deadly attacks, particularly in KP and Balochistan.

“Polio workers and security personnel who performed duties during the campaign are the nation’s true heroes,” the NEOC said.