Islamabad (EFE).- Pakistan kicked off a week-long anti-polio eradication campaign on Monday to vaccinate over 45 million children under the age of five, officials said.
“The anti-polio drive has started across the country today to vaccinate 45.4 million children nationwide,” Zulfiqar Babakhel, a spokesperson for the polio program told EFE on Monday.
The official added that during the drive children are also given additional doses of vitamin A to boost their immunity.
The campaign has started amid a surge of the polio virus, taking the number of polio cases to 29 this year, compared to 74 in 2024 and only six in 2023, according to the country’s polio program.
The campaign began in 159 districts of the country and will continue until Oct. 19.
More than 400,000 trained polio workers are going door to door to administer anti-polio vaccine.
The immunization campaign will be held between Oct. 20 and 23 in the southern parts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
In a statement on Sunday, the National Emergency Operations Center urged parents to ensure that all children up to 5 years of age are administered polio drops.
Polio, a highly infectious virus, is an incurable disease that can cause lifelong paralysis. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic.
Launched in 1994, Pakistan’s polio program has been hampered by refusals by parents, misinformation and repeated attacks on anti-polio workers by militant groups.
Some religious hard-liners who claim immunization is a foreign conspiracy to sterilize Muslim children or a guise for Western espionage.
In the volatile areas of KP and Balochistan, vaccination teams operate under police protection
However, security personnel have also been targeted in such attacks. EFE
aa/pd
