KARACHI: Pakistan’s fight against the poliovirus suffered another setback as two new cases were reported in the southern Sindh province on Tuesday, the same day the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the trachoma blinding disease was no longer a “public health problem” in the South Asian country.
The latest polio cases, one in the Karachi East district and the other in the port city’s Sujawal district, brought the nationwide 2024 tally to 26, with 15 cases reported from Balochistan province, seven from Sindh, two from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and the federal capital, Islamabad.
“No child anywhere is safe until all children in Pakistan are repeatedly vaccinated for polio, building a wall of protection so the virus cannot break through,” the Prime Minister’s Focal Person for Polio Eradication, Ayesha Raza Farooq, said.
The Pakistan polio program has said it is implementing a strategic roadmap to control virus spread and interrupt transmission by mid-2025.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif welcomed the elimination from the country of trachoma, a disease of the eye caused by infection with the chlamydia trachomatis bacterium, which can result in irreversible blindness if left untreated. Pakistan is the 19th country globally to eliminate the infectious disease, according to the WHO.
“It is hoped that this disease will never return to Pakistan,” Sharif said in televized comments on Tuesday evening, stressing the “urgent need” for Pakistan to eradicate polio and hepatitis as it had trachoma.
“For this, we will always have to keep in place whatever preventive measures are there, and keep a very effective supervision and check and balance.”
Pakistan, along with neighboring Afghanistan, remains the last polio-endemic country in the world. Starting from late 2018, Pakistan saw a resurgence of cases and increased spread of polio, highlighting the fragility of gains achieved in the preceding three years.
