ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday began a week-long anti-polio drive aimed to vaccinate over 45 million children against the virus, state media reported.

Polio is a paralyzing disease with no cure and multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine — along with completing the routine immunization schedule for children under five — are crucial to building immunity against the virus. Pakistan, which has reported six polio cases so far in 2025 and 74 in 2024, has planned three major vaccination campaigns in the first half of the year. This week’s drive is the second one for 2025.

“A week-long anti- polio vaccination campaign begins across the country on Monday,” state broadcaster Radio Pakistan reported. “During the drive, field teams of health department will go door to door to administer anti-polio vaccine drops to over 45 million children under the age of five years.”

Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the last polio-endemic countries in the world. In the early 1990s, Pakistan reported around 20,000 cases annually but in 2018 the number dropped to eight cases. Six cases were reported in 2023 and only one in 2021.

But Pakistan’s polio program, launched in 1994, has faced persistent challenges including vaccine misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners who claim immunization is a foreign conspiracy to sterilize Muslim children or a guise for Western espionage. Militant groups have also repeatedly targeted and killed polio vaccination workers, including last week when gunmen attacked a vehicle and abducted two polio workers in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

On Monday, gunmen opened fire on a police party escorting a polio team on the outskirts of Wana, a town in KP, Habib Islam, a police spokesman for the Lower South Waziristan district, told Arab News.

“One terrorist was killed while the others managed to flee the scene,” he said. 

Policemen and vaccinators remained unhurt. 

“Additional personnel and armored vehicles have been deployed to conduct a thorough search operation in the area and to ensure the security of polio vaccination teams.” Islam added. 

On Sunday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the government would ensure strict security measures to protect polio volunteers.