Pakistan’s battle against polio suffered a setback Friday as health authorities confirmed the country's eighth case of 2025, detected in Bannu, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), this latest case also pushes K-P’s tally to three for the year.
The troubling news comes even as the country is knee-deep in its second nationwide polio vaccination campaign, a massive effort targeting over 45.4 million children under five years of age — including 2.6 million in the often-overlooked expanses of Balochistan.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had painted a rosier picture during a high-level briefing, celebrating the fact that no fresh cases had been reported since February 10. He credited the apparent progress to aggressive campaigns and steady backing from international partners. Sadly, the virus, that pesky master of comebacks, seems to have had other plans.
The current vaccination blitz, launched earlier this week, is set to continue until April 27, with another push already on the calendar for May 26 to June 1. Health officials, undeterred, are hammering home the message: repeat vaccinations are essential to bolster children's defenses against the highly infectious — and potentially paralyzing — virus.
Pakistan remains one of only two countries on Earth — alongside neighbor Afghanistan — where polio stubbornly refuses to go extinct. The virus preys almost exclusively on children under five, but can be stopped cold with just a few drops of oral vaccine.