More than 27 million children have been vaccinated against polio during Pakistan’s second nationwide immunization campaign this year from Apr. 13-19, the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) said on Wednesday. Polio is a highly contagious viral disease that can cause permanent paralysis, mainly affecting children under five. Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries where the disease remains endemic. Pakistan, which conducted its first nationwide polio campaign of the year in February, has reduced polio cases by 99.8 percent since the early 1990s – from an estimated 20,000 cases to just 31 in 2025, according to the NEOC. “More than 27 million children have been vaccinated nationwide during the first two days of the campaign,” the NEOC said in a statement.
“More than 400,000 polio workers are going door-to-door administering polio drops to children.” It said more than 14.2 million children were vaccinated in Punjab province, over six million in Sindh, more than 4.3 million in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, over 1.4 million in Balochistan, around 283,000 in Islamabad, over 188,000 in Gilgit-Baltistan, and around 474,000 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Vitamin A supplements are also being provided to children during the campaign, which is being conducted simultaneously in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the NEOC added.
Pakistan’s polio eradication program launched in 1994, has faced repeated setbacks due to vaccine misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners, who claim immunization is a foreign plot to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western espionage. Militant groups have also frequently targeted polio vaccination teams, prompting the government to assign security personnel to protect them, though it has not stopped deadly attacks, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. A police officer was killed and four others wounded on Monday when gunmen attacked a polio vaccination team in northwest Pakistan on the first day of the campaign.