KARACHI: Pakistan has confirmed a new poliovirus case from the country’s northwestern Torghar district, the National Health Institute (NIH) confirmed on Tuesday, raising the total tally of cases this year to 30.
The latest polio infection was detected in a 12-month-old boy from Union Council Ghari in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province’s Torghar district, the NIH said. The makes it the 19th polio case from KP this year while nine infections have been reported from Sindh and one each from the eastern Punjab and northern Gilgit-Baltistan territories.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad, has confirmed a new case of wild poliovirus (WPV1) in District Torghar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” the statement said.
“This is the second case from District Torghar this year.”
The development takes place a day after Pakistan launched the second phase of a nationwide polio immunization campaign until Oct. 23, aiming to vaccinate more than a million children in KP, where the highest number of cases have been reported this year.
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 is among the last two nations in the world, along with Afghanistan, where the disease remains endemic. The South Asian country has made remarkable progress since the 1990s, when annual polio cases exceeded 20,000, bringing them down to just eight by 2018. However, Pakistan recorded 74 cases in 2024, a sharp increase from six in 2023 and only one in 2021.
Pakistan’s efforts to eliminate poliovirus have been hampered by parental refusals, widespread misinformation and repeated attacks on anti-polio workers by militant groups. In remote and volatile areas, vaccination teams often operate under police protection, though security personnel themselves have also been targeted and killed in attacks.
