Islamabad, Feb 23 (IANS) Pakistan reported a new case of polio in the country’s southern Sindh province, bringing the total number of the disease-infected children to three since the beginning of this year, officials from the Health Ministry said on Sunday.
The officials from the Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health (NIH) under the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations, and Coordination confirmed the detection of type 1 wild poliovirus in a child from Larkana district of the province, Xinhua news agency reported.
This is the second polio case reported from Sindh this year, bringing the total number of cases to two in Sindh and one in the country’s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Pakistan is facing a rise in poliovirus cases as 74 cases were reported in 2024. Of these, 27 were reported from Balochistan, 22 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 23 from Sindh, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
Earlier this month, Pakistan’s first nationwide polio vaccination campaign was conducted. Following this, a fractional IPV-OPV Polio (injectable polio vaccine) campaign was held in Quetta and Karachi on February 20 and 22, respectively, according to Dawn report.
Earlier this month, the first nationwide polio campaign of 2025 concluded, with 99 per cent of the targets achieved across the country, said the Health Ministry, adding that during this campaign, more than 45 million children were administered the polio vaccine from February 3 to 9.
The Ministry said that a second round of the big catch-up activity is currently underway in the country to vaccinate children up to 5 years old under the expanded programme on immunisation.
Moreover, a vaccination activity targeting more than 100 union councils bordering Afghanistan is scheduled from February 24 to 28, it said, adding that a total of 0.66 million children will be targeted for vaccination during this activity.
According to government officials, a total of 74 polio cases were reported in the country in 2024.
According to the World Health Organisation, polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. The virus is transmitted by person-to-person spread mainly through the faecal-oral route or, less frequently, by a common vehicle (for example, contaminated water or food) and multiplies in the intestine.
Fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness of the neck, and pain in the limbs are the initial symptoms of the polio virus. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs). Among those paralysed, 5-10 per cent die when their breathing muscles become immobilised.
–IANS
int/khz
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