A top official has said that around 500,000 Pakistani children most probably missed polio vaccinations during this month’s countrywide inoculation drive.
Pakistan has reported 48 polio cases this year, with 23 of those reported from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, ten from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
The surge in cases prompted Pakistan to conduct a countrywide anti-polio vaccination drive from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3, aiming to inoculate over 45 million children against the infection.
“This year I don’t have the exact figure but we are expecting around 500,000 refusals, unavailability [of people for vaccinations],” Malik Mukhtar Ahmed Bharath, coordinator to the prime minister on national health services, told Arab News in an interview.
“But we are not going to leave them [children] we are going to chase them, we are going to track them, trace them and we are going to get them vaccinated for this polio.”
Since late 2018, Pakistan has seen a resurgence of poliovirus cases, highlighting the fragility of gains achieved in the preceding years when cases dropped in 2023 to six, 20 in 2022 and just one in 2022.
Attacks on polio vaccinators and security teams deployed to protect them have also increased.
Seven people, including five children, were killed when a bomb targeted police traveling to guard vaccine workers this month. Days earlier, two police escorts were gunned down by militants.
The official regretted that over 90 polio vaccinators have been killed in the country since 2012.
“[Overall] more than 90 have been martyred just because they are serving the nation and I do not think so anywhere in the world this happens,” Bharath said.
About the recent surge in polio cases, Bharath said there was nothing wrong with Pakistan’s polio program, adding that the country has one of the best surveillance systems to monitor the disease.
He said one of the major causes of the surge in polio cases this year was due to a repatriation drive launched in 2023 by Pakistan against “illegal immigrants,” causing many Afghan refugees who were not vaccinated against polio to travel to other parts of the country and spread the infection.