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.