The National Institute of Health (NIH) on Tuesday confirmed the 14th case of poliovirus recorded in Pakistan thus far in 2025, a 19-month-old boy from North Waziristan.
The latest case brings to eight the total number of cases reported from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa thus far this year. Of the remaining six cases, four have been reported from Sindh and one each from Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan.
The global fight against the highly contagious and incurable disease has left it endemic in just two states: Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Pakistan, health experts stress on the need to continue repeated doses of the oral polio vaccine for all children under-five. However, despite multiple vaccination drives nationwide annually, health experts say the southern districts of KP continue to pose logistical challenges that hamper the ability to vaccinate all children.
Several parts of KP remain under threat of terrorism and have limited access during the winter months, preventing the house-to-house vaccination campaigns from reaching all children. Consequently, thousands of children miss doses and are at-risk of contracting the poliovirus.
Earlier this month, the Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the NIH collected 116 environmental (sewage) samples from 82 districts of the country and found 47 samples had tested positive for the poliovirus. These spanned 14 districts of Sindh, eight districts of KP, six districts of Balochistan, four districts of Punjab, and one district each of GB, and Islamabad.