PESHAWAR: As part of a global initiative to eradicate polio, a campaign to vaccinate Pakistanis of all ages will be launched at the Torkham border on March 25, an senior official said on Friday.

Capt. (Retd) Kamran Ahmed Afridi, a coordinator at the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Emergency Operation Center (EOC), said: “All age travelers crossing Pakistan-Afghanistan Torkham border will be vaccinated by the transit teams of both countries with the purpose to interrupt polio virus circulation in the region.”

The virus, he added, mostly infects children but adults can act as carriers, too. Hence the need for an all-age vaccination to put an end to the transmission of the virus across the borders.

“We are close to polio eradication and now this decision by the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan... will help contain the virus circulation in the region,” Afridi said.

He added that the Khyber tribal district has remained as a high priority tier as it’s a polio endemic area, with a history of a higher number of cases.

The area is also located adjacent to Peshawar, the provincial capital of the KP province, which has also been marked as a polio reservoir area and one which is frequented by the virus, he added.

“Additional male and female transit teams and social mobilizers have already been hired, trained and will soon be deployed (across the Torkham-crosson border) to start the vaccination process from the set date,” Afridi said.

Khyber is one district which sees the movement of around 14,000 travelers on a daily basis.

According to reports, two new cases of the polio virus had surfaced in the province, bringing the total number of cases to 10 in the country.