- Paralyzing virus found in 13-month-old girl from Tank district.
- Samples from the affected child were taken in December 2024.
- First anti-polio drive to start from February 13 in the province.
PESHAWAR: Amid continued efforts by authorities to prevent the spread of the polio virus, another child has fallen victim to the crippling disease in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the health ministry confirmed on Wednesday.
Polio virus was detected in a 13-month-old girl – from whom samples were taken in December 2024 – in the Tatta area of KP’s Tank district, pushing the total number of cases in 2024 from the district to five and the provincial total to 21.
The province remains the second most affected by the polio virus, second only to Balochistan, which reported 27 cases out of the total of 69 cases from last year.
Meanwhile, Sindh reported 19 cases, while one case each was reported in Punjab and Islamabad.
Due to the confirmation of the latest case in KP, the Ministry of Health has said that the first anti-polio drive of the current year will be launched in the province from February 13.
The vaccination campaign aims to vaccinate over six million children.
Pakistan is one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world, along with Afghanistan, and the annual number of cases had declined significantly in the country until the recent surge in cases.
The Pakistan Polio Eradication Program explains that polio is a “crippling” disease with no “cure” and “completing the routine vaccination for all children under the age of five” just gives them “high immunity against this terrible disease”.
The government has launched several vaccination drives as part of its efforts to eradicate the disease from the country, the last one being in December 2024 with the aim of inoculating 44,000,000 children across the country.
A provincial week-long anti-polio campaign was also launched in Balochistan on December 30 with the aim of vaccinating more than 2.6 million children up to five years of age.
