Pakistan reports 7th polio case of this year amid outbreak

ISLAMABAD – Pakistani well being authorities on Friday confirmed the seventh case of polio to date this yr, saying it was registered within the nation’s former Taliban stronghold within the northwest, a area bordering Afghanistan.

The outbreak, after the primary polio case of 2022 was registered in the identical area in April, is a blow to the Islamic nation’s efforts to eradicate the illness, which might trigger extreme paralysis in kids.

All seven instances have been reported in North Waziristan, a district within the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province the place the federal government has launched an investigating into the outbreak. Mother and father within the area typically refuse to get their kids inoculated.

Pakistan’s Well being Minister Abdul Qadir Patel issued a press release Friday, saying authorities had been taking steps to guard the good points made by the federal government’s polio eradication program lately. He urged mother and father to get their kids vaccinated.

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Pakistan’s anti-polio campaigns are usually marked by violence. Islamic militants typically goal polio groups and police assigned to guard them, falsely claiming the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize kids.

North Waziristan, a former tribal area, was a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban till lately, when the army claimed to have cleared the area of militants following a number of widescale operations there. Nevertheless, assaults nonetheless persist.

Pakistan has for the previous 25 years carried out common inoculation campaigns by which well being employees go door-to-door to present polio drops to kids. A lot of the employees are ladies, as they will get higher entry to moms and kids. The anti-polio groups are sometimes escorted by safety forces.

Up to now this yr, the federal government carried out three nationwide anti-polio drives — in January, March and in Might. In the course of the March marketing campaign, gunmen in northwestern Pakistan shot and killed a feminine polio employee as she was returning house after a day of vaccinations. And in January, gunmen shot and killed a police officer offering safety for polio vaccination employees, additionally within the nation’s northwest.

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Pakistan and Afghanistan are the one international locations on the planet the place polio stays endemic. In 2021, Pakistan reported just one case, elevating hopes it was near eradicating polio.