ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities have vaccinated over 43.3 million children of up to five years of age in the first five days of its nationwide anti-polio campaign, state media reported this week amid Islamabad’s attempts to rid the country of the crippling disease. 

Pakistan launched the week-long campaign this Monday, with officials aiming to reach over 45 million children across Pakistan amid its efforts to eradicate the paralytic disease. Pakistan is one of only two countries alongside Afghanistan where wild poliovirus still remains endemic.

State broadcaster Radio Pakistan said that as per statistics, over 22.9 million children have received the oral polio vaccine in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province while approximately 10.2 million children have been immunized in southern Sindh. It said in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), over 6.1 million children have been vaccinated while in Balochistan, over 2.5 million have received the vaccine.

 In Islamabad, around 443,000 children while in Gilgit-Baltistan nearly 294,000 and in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, over 733,000 have received the anti-polio vaccine.

“The ongoing national campaign aims to vaccinate over 45 million children and will continue uninterrupted until tomorrow [Sunday],” Radio Pakistan reported on Saturday. 

It said that in southern KP, the campaign is scheduled to begin from Monday.

Polio is a highly infectious and incurable disease that can cause lifelong paralysis. The only effective protection is through repeated doses of the Oral Polio Vaccine for every child under five during each campaign, alongside timely completion of all routine immunizations.

Pakistan has made remarkable progress since the 1990s, when annual polio cases exceeded 20,000, bringing them down to just eight by 2018. However, the country recorded 74 cases in 2024 — a sharp increase from six in 2023 and only one in 2021.

Vaccine hesitancy fueled by misinformation and opposition from some religious hard-liners still hinder eradication efforts. In remote and volatile areas, vaccination teams often operate under police protection, though security personnel themselves have also been targeted and killed in attacks by militant groups.