Pakistan’s Punjab reports its first polio case of 2024, taking national tally to 12

A health worker administers polio vaccine drops to a child during a door-to-door polio vaccination campaign at a slum area in Lahore on May 23, 2022. (AFP/File)

• Latest polio case detected from Pakistan’s eastern Chakwal district, confirms official
• Pakistan to launch three anti-polio campaigns in September, October and December

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Punjab has reported its first case of the poliovirus this year, a government official confirmed on Sunday, taking the total nationwide tally of the cases reported this year to 12.
Pakistan’s National Coordinator for Polio Captain (retd) Anwar ul Haq confirmed that the latest case was reported on Saturday from Punjab’s Chakwal district. 
As per local media reports, a six-year-old male child had been infected with the virus. 
Previously, Pakistan has reported nine cases from the southwestern Balochistan province and two in the southern Sindh province this year.
“The first case of polio in Punjab this year has been reported in Chakwal district of the province,” Haq told Arab News. “Samples from the sewage have been taken from across the country and poliovirus has been found in more than 50 districts of Pakistan.” 
Haq said the government is launching three anti-polio campaigns in September, October and December this year to curb the infection. 
“Pakistan is launching these campaigns simultaneously with Afghanistan to make it more effective,” he said. “The government has set a target to achieve 96 percent of children vaccinated by the end of 2024.”
Polio is a highly infectious disease mainly affecting children under the age of five years. It invades the nervous system and can cause paralysis or even death. While there is no cure for polio, vaccination has proven to be the most effective way to protect children from the crippling disease.
Polio vaccination efforts in Pakistan have been hampered by the belief among many Pakistanis, particularly those residing in the conservative northwestern tribal areas, that the medicine is a Western campaign aimed at sterilizing the country’s population or a cover for Western spies.
In 2012, the local Taliban ordered a ban on immunization against polio in some tribal districts. Several policemen have been killed this year while on security duty during vaccination campaigns that are frequently targeted by militants. Dozens of polio workers have also lost their lives over the decades.
The 2011 US special forces raid inside Pakistan that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, also increased masses’ fears about polio vaccination.
A Pakistani doctor was accused of using a fake vaccination campaign to collect DNA samples that the CIA was believed to have been using to verify bin Laden’s identity. The doctor remains jailed in Pakistan.