By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: Pakistan has recorded its sixth case of polio this year, after a seven-year-old boy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Khyber district was found to be infected, the country’s National Emergency Operations Centre for Polio Eradication (NEOC) said on Monday.
The child is from Union Council Ghundi-A in Jamrud tehsil, according to a statement from the centre. Khyber is a district on the Afghan border.
The Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative has begun a “comprehensive case investigation”, the NEOC said. “As a response, additional measures to reach and protect children are also being planned – including a vaccination campaign to administer both oral and injectable vaccines for children of older age, as well as enhancement of routine immunisation,” it added.
The focus on older children is notable because polio campaigns usually concentrate on those under five.
Five of Pakistan’s six cases this year have come from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and four of those from the Bannu division. The remaining case was reported in Sindh, where a four-year-old child from Sujawal district was the first to be confirmed in 2026.
The latest infection comes less than a week after the fifth case surfaced on 29 September. That case involved a 17-month-old girl from Khandar Khankhel Union Council in Domel tehsil, Bannu district. The fourth case, also from Bannu, was confirmed on 11 September.
The new case follows a weeklong sub-national vaccination campaign that ended on 27 September, during which more than 28.2 million children were vaccinated. The programme says Pakistan has run four large-scale campaigns this year, reaching more than 45 million children, alongside smaller targeted drives in high-risk areas.
Severe security challenges, however, continue to threaten eradication efforts in the northwest, and Bannu remains a critical vulnerability.
The NEOC has said overall transmission of the virus has declined since 2025, but that it continues to circulate persistently in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A World Health Organization emergency committee statement published on 25 August named southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Karachi as areas of persistent transmission. It also warned of the risk of the virus spreading across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The six cases so far this year compare with 31 in 2025 and 74 in 2024. Of last year’s 31 cases, 20 were in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, nine in Sindh, and one each in Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan. Officials say the vaccination programme has cut annual cases by 99.8 per cent from an estimated 20,000 in the early 1990s.
Polio is highly contagious and incurable. It can cause lifelong paralysis and, in some cases, death, but it can be prevented with safe and effective vaccines. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries where the disease is still endemic.
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