Polio is a life-threatening disease for which there is no cure, but safe and effective drops on time can save a child's life from any disability. That's why Pakistan's polio eradication strategies and the fight against polio require every child to receive the polio vaccine to prevent transmission.
Early in the 1990s, the situation was alarming, when many cases of Polio were reported in different provinces of Pakistan, but launching the 'Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme' in 1994 occurs a positive outcome in the current age, the cases of polio have seen a massive decline after taking vital action to free Pakistan from Polio virus.
Pakistan is now standing as one of the three remaining polio-endemic countries in the world, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria after starting the Eradication Programme, that's the main aim of this, is to eradicate polio in Pakistan by reaching every child with polio vaccines.
"In first month of 2023 no polio cases is reported"
Senior Manager of Media Affairs of PPEP, Zulfiqar Babakhel said that "Wild poliovirus (WPV) reported cases across Pakistan in 2022 was 20 and all the cases were reported by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa KP.
In the previous year, 17 cases were reported in North Waziristan and two cases of Lakki Marwat, and only one case was reported in South Waziristan.
As per Zulfiqar Babakhel, 200,893,073 children under the age of five years were provided with polio drops in 2022.
"The main achievement of the National Immunization Days Campaign (NIDC) is giving polio drops to children under the age of 5 years and in this campaign, we vaccinated 44 million children in Pakistan," Zulfiqar Babakhel added.
In 2022, "we saw so many cases of Polio in South Waziristan, then a special campaign was organized in that particular area to eliminate polio,” Zulfiqar added.
Zulfiqar added that "In 2023 we set a new target to free Pakistan from Polio and also we take a strong step to tackle Polio,"
Polio paralyzed about 20,000 Pakistani children a year in the early 1990s, but after gradually controlling the spread of poliovirus transmission the previous year, no Polio cases were reported in the first month of January 2023.
However, No polio virus has been reported from Sindh over the last 30 months. The last polio case was reported on July 14 from Jacobabad while in Karachi on June 9, 2020, from Landhi, District Malir,"
As per current concluded polio drive in Sindh, an estimated 4,967,244 children under five years of age would receive oral polio drops along with vitamin A capsules during the campaign.
As per WPV Polio cases statistics, in 2021 only one case was reported, in 2020 84 cases were reported and most were cases reported in 13 districts of Balochistan (26).
But comparatively, in 2019, a total of 147 wild polioviruses (WPV) cases were reported, and also 22 circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV2) cases were reported in the country.
The majority of WPV cases were from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province as a result of polio vaccination uncertainty and many challenges faced by the vaccination program in the region. The WPV cases reported in KP 14 districts of WPV is 93 and cVDPV2 Polio cases in KPK is 16.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) hopes that the crippling disease will be eradicated from the country by the end of 2023 following effective measures to control its spread.