Pakistan begins final polio vaccination campaign of the year

Pakistan launched its last nationwide polio vaccination campaign for the year after a surge in new cases hampered efforts to stop the potentially fatal, paralysing disease, officials said.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan remain the only two countries where the virus hasn’t yet been eliminated.

Pakistan has reported 63 confirmed cases since January, and the campaign to protect 45 million young children began in October.

Ayesha Raza Farooq, the prime minister’s adviser for the polio eradication programme, said the anti-polio drive will continue until December 22.

“As a mother, I am appealing to you to open your doors for health workers,” she said.

Pakistan regularly launches such campaigns despite violence affecting medical personnel who oversee the vaccinations and security forces escorting them. Militants falsely claim that vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilise children.

Health workers targeted by gunmen

Authorities deployed thousands of police officers to protect health workers following intelligence reports that insurgents could target them.

However, gunmen opened fire Monday on police escorting polio workers in Karak, a city in the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing a police officer and wounding a health worker, local police official Ayaz Khan said.

Also on Monday, a gunman riding on a motorcycle shot and wounded a police officer assigned to escort polio workers from a health facility in the northwestern city of Bannu, said local police chief Hamid Khan.

No one has claimed responsibility for the twin attacks. But more than 200 polio workers and police assigned for their protection have been killed since the 1990s, according to health officials and authorities.

The latest anti-polio drive campaign began a day after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met with medical staff and vowed that Pakistan would win the war against polio.

Afghanistan reported at least 23 confirmed cases in 2024, according to WHO data.

In September, the Afghan Taliban suddenly stopped a door-to-door vaccination campaign in Afghanistan, a devastating setback for polio eradication.

The virus is one of the world’s most infectious, and any unvaccinated groups of children where the virus is spreading could undermine years of progress.