KARACHI: Pakistan has reported its latest polio infection from the southwestern Balochistan province, the country’s polio eradication program confirmed on Tuesday, pushing the total tally of cases of the disease this year to 65.
The recent case was reported from Pakistan’s Killa Abdullah district in Balochistan, the seventh from the area this year, the Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at Pakistan’s National Institute of Health said.
Pakistan, along with neighboring Afghanistan, remains the last polio-endemic country in the world. The nation’s polio eradication campaign has faced serious problems with a spike in reported cases this year that have prompted officials to review their approach to stopping the crippling disease.
“Pakistan is responding to the resurgence of WPV1 this year with 65 cases reported so far,” the Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme said in a statement. “Of these, 27 are from Balochistan, 18 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 18 from Sindh, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.”
It said a sub-national polio vaccination campaign in Balochistan is scheduled to begin from Dec. 30, during which all 36 districts of the province will be targeted for vaccination.
“To keep children safe, it is critical for parents to welcome vaccinators among them and bring their children forward for vaccination,” the statement said.
Poliovirus, which can cause crippling paralysis particularly in young children, is incurable and remains a threat to human health as long as it has not been eradicated. Immunization campaigns have succeeded in most countries and have come close in Pakistan, but persistent problems remain.
In the early 1990s, Pakistan reported around 20,000 cases annually but in 2018 the number dropped to eight cases. Six cases were reported in 2023 and only one in 2021.
Pakistan’s polio program began in 1994 but efforts to eradicate the virus have since been undermined by vaccine misinformation and opposition from some religious hard-liners, who say immunization is a foreign ploy to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western spies. Militant groups also frequently attack and kill members of polio vaccine teams.
