KARACHI: Pakistani health authorities vaccinated over seven million, or 24.9% of the targeted 28.7 million children against poliovirus during the first day of an ongoing countrywide drive against the disease this week, the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) said on Tuesday.
Pakistan kicked off the week-long vaccination campaign on Monday in 99 high-risk districts across the country. Pakistani health authorities said their target was to vaccinate 28.7 million children under the age of five against poliovirus, with the campaign set to conclude on Sept. 7.
Polio is a highly infectious and incurable disease that can cause lifelong paralysis. The only protection is repeated doses of oral vaccine for every child under five, along with timely routine immunizations. Pakistan has reported 24 polio cases so far this year including 16 from the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), six from the southern Sindh province and one each from Punjab and northern Gilgit Baltistan (GB).
“On the first day, vaccination of 24.9% of children across the country was completed,” the NEOC said. “The polio campaign is being conducted simultaneously in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
The NEOC said 30% of children were vaccinated in Punjab, 22% in Sindh, 29% in KP, 20% in Balochistan, 18% in Islamabad, 21% in GB and 31% in Azad Kashmir on Monday.
The authority urged parents to cooperate with polio teams and complete the immunization timely to stem the spread of the infection.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries where polio remains endemic. Pakistan has made significant progress in curbing the virus in the past, 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 a sharp resurgence in 2024 with 74 cases recorded.
Pakistan’s polio program began in 1994, but efforts to eradicate the virus have been repeatedly undermined by vaccine misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners who claim that immunization is a foreign plot to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western espionage.
Militant groups have also frequently targeted polio vaccination teams and the security personnel assigned to protect them, often resulting in deadly attacks, particularly in KP and Balochistan.
