ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities have administered polio drops to over 44 million children in the country’s ongoing nationwide vaccination drive, state-run media reported this week.
Pakistan launched a nationwide campaign from Apr. 21-27 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 government has successfully administered anti-polio drops to over 44 million children across Pakistan in five days during ongoing vaccination drive,” the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported on Saturday.
Pakistan’s National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) said the ongoing polio vaccination campaign is being conducted simultaneously in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The APP report said the ongoing vaccination coverage has reached 97 percent in Punjab and Sindh provinces and 99 percent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces.
“In the federal capital Islamabad, 99 percent of the target has been achieved while Azad Jammu and Kashmir reported 100 percent coverage, and Gilgit-Baltistan achieved 99 percent,” it added.
The report said the NEOC expected another one million children to be vaccinated by Apr. 27.
“Parents have been urged to fully cooperate with polio workers and ensure that all children under the age of five receive polio drops during every campaign,” the APP said.
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.
