PESHAWAR: Pakistan’s National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) on Friday confirmed two new cases of wild poliovirus in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a development that underscores the persistence of transmission in the province’s southern belt despite a steady national decline.
The infections were reported from Bannu and North Waziristan, involving a 26-month-old child from Janikhel union council and a four-month-old infant from Garyom union council, both in areas long flagged by health authorities for access constraints and inconsistent immunisation coverage.
With these detections, the country’s total number of polio cases this year has risen to three, according to officials.The cases were picked up through the national poliovirus surveillance network and subsequently confirmed by the World Health Organisation-accredited Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad.
Health officials said that the latest infections reflected enduring immunity gaps in southern districts, where operational challenges, population movement, and sporadic campaign access have allowed the virus to retain a foothold.
Pakistan has recorded a marked reduction in cases in recent years, from 74 in 2024 to 31 in 2025, as a result of intensified immunisation drives. Since the launch of the eradication initiative in 1994, the caseload has fallen by 99.8percent, from an estimated 20,000 annually in the early 1990s.Even so, officials caution that the final phase of eradication remains the most complex, requiring sustained, precisely targeted interventions in the remaining high-risk pockets.
