ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has formally kicked off its first anti-polio drive of 2025 today, Monday, to vaccinate over 45 million children under the age of five, the health ministry said as the country hopes to stem the spread of the disease.
The Pakistan polio program conducts multiple mass vaccination drives in a year, and this year’s first anti-polio vaccination campaign is expected to continue till Feb. 9. Pakistan has assembled teams of around 400,000 polio workers to go door-to-door countrywide to vaccinate children below five years of age, Coordinator for Health Dr. Mukhtar Bharath said.
Polio is a paralyzing disease that has no cure. Multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five are essential to provide children high immunity against the disease.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif launched Pakistan’s first anti-polio drive of 2025 during an event in Islamabad on Sunday, administering polio drops to children during the ceremony.
“During the polio campaign, more than 45 million children across the country will be administered polio drops,” the Ministry of Health’s spokesperson said.
Dr. Bharath called on parents to support polio vaccinators and ensure their children received the vaccines.
“It is the national and moral responsibility of parents to vaccinate all children under the age of five,” he said.
Pakistan has reported only one polio case this year. However, last year the South Asian country reported 73 cases with Balochistan province reporting 27, the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh reporting 22 case each, and Pakistan’s capital city and eastern Punjab province each reporting one case of the disease throughout the year.
Pakistan and Afghanistan remain the only two countries where the disease is endemic.
Immunization campaigns have succeeded in most countries and have come close in Pakistan, but persistent problems remain. In the early 1990s, Pakistan reported around 20,000 cases annually but in 2018 the number dropped to eight cases. Six cases were reported in 2023 and only one in 2021.
Pakistan’s polio program began in 1994 but efforts to eradicate the virus have since been undermined by vaccine misinformation and opposition from some religious hard-liners who say immunization is a foreign ploy to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western spies.
Militant groups also frequently attack and kill members of polio vaccine teams.
