KARACHI: Pakistan’s polio eradication program confirmed a new case of the disease in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday, bringing the total count to eight as the nationwide drive to inoculate millions of children continues.
Pakistan launched a campaign earlier this week to vaccinate over 45 million children against polio. The country reported 74 cases in 2024 and has planned three major vaccination drives in the first half of this year.
The current campaign is the second of 2025, with a third set to begin from May 26 to June 1.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health Islamabad has confirmed a polio case from District Bannu, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” the lab said in a statement, adding this was the third case from the province this year.
It also urged parents to ensure that their children receive repeated doses of the polio vaccine to protect them from the disease.
On Wednesday, two security officials assigned to protect a polio vaccination team were killed in a gun attack in the Teri area of Mastung, in the southwestern Balochistan province.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan remain the last polio-endemic countries in the world. In the early 1990s, Pakistan reported around 20,000 cases annually, but by 2018, the number had dropped to eight. Six cases were reported in 2023 and only one in 2021.
Pakistan’s polio eradication 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 cover for Western espionage.
Militant groups have also repeatedly targeted and killed polio vaccination workers. Last week, gunmen attacked a vehicle and abducted two polio workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
On April 21, a militant was killed when a police team escorting a polio team on the outskirts of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan district, responded to a gun attack.
Pakistan confirms new polio case in northwest, bringing 2025 total to eight
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Pakistan confirms new polio case in northwest, bringing 2025 total to eight
- The country has launched a week-long anti-polio drive to immunize over 45 million children
- Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two polio-endemic countries throughout the world
Imran Khan not a ‘national security threat,’ ex-PM’s party responds to Pakistan military
- Pakistan’s military spokesperson on Friday described Khan’s anti-army narrative as a “national security threat”
- PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan says words used by military spokesperson for Khan were “not appropriate”
ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party on Saturday responded to allegations by Pakistan military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry from a day earlier, saying that he was not a “national security threat.”
Chaudhry, who heads the military’s media wing as director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), spoke to journalists on Friday, in which he referred to Khan as a “mentally ill” person several times during the press interaction. Chaudhry described Khan’s anti-army narrative as a “national security threat.”
The military spokesperson was responding to Khan’s social media post this week in which he accused Chief of Defense Forces Field Marshal Asim Munir of being responsible for “the complete collapse of the constitution and rule of law in Pakistan.”
“The people of Pakistan stand with Imran Khan, they stand with PTI,” the party’s secretary-general, Salman Akram Raja, told reporters during a news conference.
“Imran Khan is not a national security threat. Imran Khan has kept the people of this country united.”
Raja said there were several narratives in the country, including those that created tensions along ethnic and sectarian lines, but Khan had rejected all of them and stood with one that the people of Pakistan supported.
PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan, flanked by Raja, criticized the military spokesperson as well, saying his press talk on Thursday had “severely disappointed” him.
“The words that were used [by the military spokesperson] were not appropriate,” Gohar said. “Those words were wrong.”
‘NATURAL OUTCOME’
Speaking to reporters earlier on Saturday, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif defended the military spokesperson’s remarks against Khan.
“When this kind of language is used for individuals as well as for institutions, then a reaction is a natural outcome,” he said.
“The same thing is happening on the Twitter accounts being run in his [Khan’s] name. If the DG ISPR has given any reaction to it, then I believe it was a very measured reaction.”
Khan, who was ousted after a parliamentary vote of confidence in April 2022, blames the country’s powerful military for removing him from power by colluding with his political opponents. Both deny the allegations.
The former prime minister, who has been in prison since August 2023 on a slew of charges he says are politically motivated, also alleges his party was denied victory by the army and his political rivals in the 2024 general election through rigging.
The army and the government both deny his allegations.
