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PESHAWAR, Dec 13 (APP):Through coordinated efforts at national level, polio cases in the country have been reduced by nearly 60 percent, falling from 74 infections in 2024 to 30 in 2025.
“In the outgoing year 2025, large scale nationwide polio immunization campaigns were launched for vaccination of 45 million children in the country,” shares Zia ur Rehman, Spokesman for Polio Eradication Programme.
During these campaigns, 98 percent of children under the age of five in the target cohort received polio drops, significantly strengthening their immunity, Zia told APP.
In each campaign, he continued, more than 400,000 vaccinators including 25,000 female visited door to door to administer polio drops to children in every nook and corner of the country.
Zia also informed that due to strenuous efforts registration of environmental samples in different parts of the country is reduced drastically, confining only to few pockets in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Southern districts and Karachi.
Similarly, he continued, no case of polio infection has been reported from any densely populated urban localities like Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar which were core reservoirs of polio virus.
“The number of districts affected by polio in the country has declined from 82 in 2024 to 36 in 2025,” Zia added.
He said the focus of health teams is to educate parents to ensure vaccination of their children in each campaign for boosting immunity of the minors.
Zia noted that even if a child is already immunized, receiving polio drops during any nationwide campaign further boosts his immunity and enhances protection against infection.
He said coordination between different Health departments including Federal Directorate of Immunization (FDI), Expanded Programme for Immunization (EPI), National Emergency Operation Center, Education Department and others are making the polio eradication efforts more effective and impactful.
In the recently conducted Measles and Rubella immunization campaign targeting 35,167,257 number of children from 0 to 59 months, around 23,186,915 number of children were also administered Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV).
Apart from strong coordination at the national level, international synchronization has also been achieved by simultaneously launching polio immunization campaigns in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the only two countries in the world where polio cases are still reported.
Polio Eradication Spokesman informed that the upcoming polio eradication campaign starting from December 15, 2025 is fully synchronized with Afghanistan where vaccination will also be carried out nationwide.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Khaliq-ur-Rehman, while talking with newsmen at the launching of polio immunization campaign in KP on Friday, said that efforts have been made to reach target children in Southern districts where security issues hamper complete coverage.
Additional Security arrangements have been made in districts where security concerns are high and hopefully all the children will be administered polio preventive vaccine, he added.