Pakistan is set to launch a polio eradication campaign from today, in selected districts of Pakistan’s Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces to immunize more than 11 million children under the age of five, state-media said.
Polio is a highly infectious disease that invades the nervous system and can cause paralysis or even death. The virus has been eliminated in developed nations but persists in parts of India, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan has reported eight polio cases in 2024, six of them from the impoverished southwestern Balochistan province.
Polio vaccination efforts in Pakistan are complicated by the belief among many Pakistanis, particularly those residing in the conservative 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 had ordered a ban on immunization against polio in some tribal districts. At least 11 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.
“A varied-duration anti-polio campaign will start on Monday in selected districts of Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” Radio Pakistan said.
A seven-day anti-polio drive would target more than five million children in six high-risk districts of Lahore, Bahawalnagar, Lodhran, Muzaffargarh and Gujranwala in the central-eastern Punjab province while 4.7 million children would be vaccinated in 16 districts of Karachi.
A five-day polio vaccination campaign would also begin in 11 districts of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and administer polio drops to around 1.3 million children. The campaign will take place in the Swabi, Swat, Tank, North Waziristan, South Waziristan and selected union councils of D I Khan, Peshawar, Kurram, Bannu and Lakki Marwat districts.
The number of cases of polio has steadily declined since 2014 when 306 were reported in Pakistan.