PESHAWAR: Pakistan’s National Institute of Health (NIH) reported two new cases of the poliovirus on Monday, taking the total number of cases of the disease reported this year to 25 as Islamabad struggles to stem its spread of the infection. 

Polio is a highly infectious and incurable disease that can cause lifelong paralysis. Experts say the only effective protection is through repeated doses of the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) for every child under the age of five, alongside timely completion of all routine immunizations.

The two new cases were reported from Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, in a 21-month-old girl from Badin district, and in a 72-month-old girl from district Kohistan in northwestern Pakistan. 

“With these detections, the total number of polio cases in Pakistan in 2025 has reached 21–including 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, six from Sindh, and one each from Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan,” Pakistan’s polio program said in a statement. 

The program said continued detection of polio cases shows that children remain at risk in areas with low vaccine acceptance. It said a Sub-National Polio Vaccination Campaign will take place from Sept. 1-7, targeting more than 28 million children under the age of five, in 99 districts across all provinces and regions. 

He said the campaign in southern KP will be conducted from Sept. 15, adding that the goal was to ensure every child in these districts receives the vaccine to protect them from polio.

“Parents and caregivers are strongly urged to ensure their children receive the polio vaccine during this and every campaign,” the statement said. 

Over the past year, the polio program has conducted six high-quality vaccination campaigns, four of them nationwide, each reaching over 45 million children.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries where polio remains endemic.

Islamabad made significant progress in curbing the virus, with annual cases dropping from around 20,000 in the early 1990s to just eight in 2018. Pakistan reported six cases in 2023 and only one in 2021 but the country saw an intense resurgence of the poliovirus in 2024, with 74 cases reported.

Efforts to eradicate the virus have been repeatedly undermined by vaccine misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners, who claim immunization is a foreign plot to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western espionage. Militant groups have frequently targeted polio vaccination teams and the security personnel assigned to protect them, particularly in KP and Balochistan.