By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan launched a week-long polio vaccination campaign on Monday, targeting over 45 million children, with security tightened after recent attacks on health workers.
The campaign, the second of three planned for early 2025, involves 415,000 workers administering oral vaccine drops to children under five. It ranks among Pakistan’s largest public health efforts, reflecting its push to eliminate polio.
“A week-long anti-polio vaccination campaign begins across the country on Monday,” state broadcaster Radio Pakistan reported. “During the drive, field teams of health department will go door to door to administer anti-polio vaccine drops to over 45 million children under the age of five years.”
Polio, a paralyzing disease with no cure, requires multiple vaccine doses for immunity. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the last countries where it remains endemic. Pakistan recorded six cases in 2025 so far and 74 in 2024, a spike after years of decline.
Cases fell from 20,000 annually in the early 1990s to one in 2021, but the recent surge—74 in 2024 and six in 2025—underscores challenges in the eradication program started in 1994.
Vaccine misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners, who claim immunization is a foreign conspiracy to sterilize Muslim children or a guise for Western espionage, have hindered efforts. Militant groups have also repeatedly targeted polio workers, posing a significant threat to the campaign.
On Monday, attackers fired on a police escort for a vaccination team in Wana, a town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, with one assailant killed.
“One terrorist was killed while the others managed to flee the scene,” local media quoted Habib Islam, a police spokesman for the Lower South Waziristan district, as saying.
Policemen and vaccinators remained unhurt. “Additional personnel and armored vehicles have been deployed to conduct a thorough search operation in the area and to ensure the security of polio vaccination teams,” Islam added.
Last week, gunmen abducted two polio workers in KP. In 2024, 20 people died and 53 were injured in KP during anti-polio efforts. Security has since been bolstered.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, on Sunday, officially launched the campaign in Islamabad, expressing optimism about its outcome.
“Through our collective efforts, we will be successful in this campaign,” he said, thanking international partners like the World Health Organization and the Bill Gates Foundation. “We are grateful for your support, and I want to assure you that we will achieve a roaring success.”
He urged parents to cooperate, adding, “I request parents throughout the country to help us and the teams in the field to make this campaign a success.”
The government remains hopeful, as no new polio case has been reported in over two months, with the last case recorded on February 10, 2025.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
