Pakistan reported one new case of polio in Sindh’s Jacobabad district on Tuesday, raising the previous year’s toll to 71, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said in a statement.
Pakistan is one of the last two countries in the world, along with Afghanistan, where polio remains endemic; The disease mainly affects children under five years of age and sometimes causes lifelong paralysis. Despite global efforts to eradicate the virus, challenges such as safety concerns, vaccine hesitancy and misinformation have slowed progress.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication of the National Institute of Health confirmed the detection of the 71st case of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) of 2024 in the country,” the statement said.
“On Tuesday, January 14, 2025, the laboratory confirmed a case of polio in a male child from Jacobabad. The onset of this case was on December 27, 2024. Jacobabad has now reported 5 cases of polio in 2024,” the NIH said.
Pakistan has been responding to an intense resurgence of WPV1 with 71 cases reported in 2024. Of them, 27 are from Balochistan, 21 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 21 from Sindh and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
The first polio vaccination campaign of the year is scheduled to take place across the country from February 3 to 9, 2025. It is crucial that parents ensure vaccination of all their children under the age of five to keep them protected, it adds the statement.
Polio is a crippling disease with no cure. Multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completing the routine vaccination schedule for all children under five years of age are essential to provide children with high immunity against this terrible disease.
The Pakistan Polio Program carries out multiple mass vaccination campaigns in a year, bringing the vaccine to children at their doorsteps, while the Expanded Program on Immunization provides vaccines against 12 childhood diseases for free at health centres.
Last week, the 70th polio case of the previous year was detected in the eastern district of Karachi.
A sub-national polio vaccination campaign was carried out in Punjab, Sindh, KP, AJK, GB and Islamabad from December 16 to 22, vaccinating more than 42 million children.
