Pakistan reports two new polio cases as 2024 tally surges to 67

A delivery boy rides past the building of National Institute of Health (NIH), a Pakistani research institute mainly responsible for biomedical and health related research, in Islamabad on August 16, 2024. (AFP/File)

• Pakistan detects poliovirus cases from Kashmore in southern Sindh and Tank in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces
• Efforts to eradicate polio have been undermined by misinformation, opposition from religious hard-liners

KARACHI: Pakistan reported two new polio cases on Thursday, pushing this year’s tally of the infection to 67, the country’s polio eradication program said amid Islamabad’s struggle to contain the spread of the disease. 
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.
The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at Pakistan’s National Institute of Health confirmed that two wild poliovirus type 1 cases, one each from Tank in northwestern Pakistan and Kashmore in Sindh were reported on Thursday. 
“Pakistan is responding to the resurgence of WPV1 this year with 67 cases reported so far,” the Polio Eradication Programme said. “Of these, 27 are from Balochistan, 19 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 19 from Sindh, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.”
It said that this was the fourth case reported from Tank and second from Kashmore this year.
Pakistani authorities last week conducted a large-scale sub-national polio vaccination campaign in Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Islamabad, vaccinating over 42 million children. 
The second phase of the campaign is scheduled to begin on Dec. 30, covering Balochistan province. 
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.