Pakistan Launches Polio Drive Targeting Over 31 Million Children

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan launched a new sub-national polio vaccination campaign on Monday across 115 selected districts, with health authorities aiming to immunise more than 31 million children under the age of five. The week-long drive is concentrating resources on areas where children remain vulnerable to poliovirus transmission and where population movement can make vaccination coverage more difficult to maintain.

More than 273,000 polio workers are participating in the campaign nationwide. Vaccination teams are visiting communities to administer oral polio vaccine, while authorities have urged parents and caregivers to ensure that every eligible child receives the drops even if the child has been vaccinated during previous campaigns. Repeated vaccination is a central part of efforts to build sufficient immunity among young children and interrupt transmission.

The largest provincial targets are in Punjab and Sindh. Around 10.6 million children are due to be vaccinated across 13 districts of Punjab, while approximately 10 million children are targeted in 30 districts of Sindh. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa accounts for another 7.3 million children across 37 districts, reflecting the scale of operations required to reach communities in both urban and remote areas.

In Balochistan, teams are targeting about 2.3 million children across 32 districts. Islamabad's target is around 447,000 children, while two districts of Gilgit-Baltistan account for approximately 137,000 children. The campaign therefore covers all four provinces as well as the federal capital and parts of Gilgit-Baltistan, with particular attention being given to high-risk and hotspot locations.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has mobilised around 35,000 vaccination teams for its portion of the campaign, supported by approximately 50,000 police personnel assigned to security duties. Provincial figures show that three polio cases have been detected in KP so far this year, including two in Bannu and one in North Waziristan. The security deployment reflects the continuing operational challenges faced by vaccination teams in areas where health workers may require additional protection.

Punjab has deployed more than 77,000 polio workers and nearly 40,000 mobile, fixed and transit teams. Punjab Emergency Operations Centre Coordinator Khalid Parvaiz said reaching every child under five remains the programme's foremost priority, particularly in communities with high levels of population movement. The campaign will run for seven days in Lahore and for four days in the other participating Punjab districts, with activities scheduled through September 27 in the provincial capital.

The campaign comes as Pakistan reports a substantial decline in confirmed polio cases compared with last year. Officials recently told a national polio taskforce meeting that cases had fallen from 31 in 2025 to four so far in 2026, while the proportion of environmental surveillance samples testing positive had also declined. Despite that progress, international eradication experts continue to identify Pakistan, alongside Afghanistan, as one of the world's remaining countries with endemic wild poliovirus transmission.

Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal has reaffirmed the government's commitment to continuing eradication efforts until transmission is completely interrupted, describing polio elimination as a national responsibility connected to children's health and future. Authorities are now focused on achieving high vaccination coverage during the current campaign, monitoring missed children and maintaining surveillance in vulnerable areas. The next assessment will depend on how effectively teams reach mobile, underserved and high-risk populations and whether recent declines in cases and environmental detections can be sustained.