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Pakistani authorities prepare to launch national vaccination campaign for children under five
Pakistan's health authorities say they have confirmed six more cases of polio, bringing the number of children infected to 39 this year.
The new cases of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) included three in Balochistan, two in Sindh province and one in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Polio, an infectious disease that causes crippling paralysis in young children, has been virtually eliminated globally after decades of vaccination campaigns.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the last countries where the disease is still endemic. There is no cure for the disease and paralysis caused by infection is irreversible.
“This should be a wake-up call to all parents and communities,” Ms. Ayesha Raza Farooq, Pakistan's Prime Minister's Polio Eradication Officer, said recently.
“Each case of paralytic polio means hundreds of children are silently affected by poliovirus and potentially carrying and spreading this virus in their communities,” she added.
This year, 20 cases have been detected in Balochistan, Pakistan's worst-affected province. It is followed by the province of Sindh with 12 cases. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded five, while Punjab and Islamabad reported one each.
“Continued population movements, security concerns in high-risk areas and continued vaccine hesitancy all contribute to the persistence of the virus,” said Melissa Corkum, head of the polio team at Unicef in Pakistan, to the BBC.
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Polio vaccine doctors have already been given armed guards to protect themselves from activists, who falsely claim the polio vaccine is a plot to sterilize Muslims.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed at least 18 cases of polio in neighboring Afghanistan this year, most of them in the south of the country.
Pakistan is launching a national polio vaccination campaign on October 28 to vaccinate more than 45 million children under the age of five against paralytic polio.
Before the latest wave of infections, Pakistan – and its population of more than 240 million – was on the verge of eradicating the disease.
The country recorded only six cases in 2023, after 20 in 2022 and just one in 2021.
Health officials say they face a number of challenges convincing people to vaccinate their children.
Clerics and radical activists have campaigned against vaccination, falsely claiming it is a Western conspiracy to sterilize Muslims. As a result, many communities are avoiding getting vaccinated.
In recent years, several polio vaccinators and the security officials who accompanied them have been attacked by militants. At least 15 people, mostly police officers, have been killed and dozens injured this year during vaccination campaigns.
“Security concerns have in the past led to delayed or fragmented campaigns, leading to missed opportunities for vaccination and leaving children vulnerable,” said Ms Corkum, the Unicef official.
