Pakistan reports new polio case in northwest, raising nationwide tally
to 50 cases this year
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[November 20, 2024]
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan detected one more polio case in the restive
northwest bordering Afghanistan, raising the country's tally of the
infectious disease to 50 cases this year, officials said Wednesday.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where
the spread of polio has never been stopped.
The sudden rise in cases of polio, which is an infection caused by a
virus that mostly affects children under 5, has hampered the country's
yearslong efforts to make it a polio-free state.
The latest case was detected in Tank, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
province where militants often target polio workers and police assigned
for anti-polio campaigns, according to a statement by the National
Emergency Operations Centre for Polio Eradication. Pakistan has reported
50 such cases this year, it said.
Most polio cases this year were reported in the restive southwestern
Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces bordering Afghanistan,
where 23 confirmed cases have surfaced, according to data from the World
Health Organization. That’s up from six cases in 2023.
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Hamid Jafari, the WHO director for
the Eastern Mediterranean, said last week the forced repatriation of
Afghans from Pakistan was a major setback to polio eradication and
has led to a “massive and unpredictable movement” of people within
the two countries and across borders.
“The virus moved with these populations,” he told a
virtual discussion hosted by the Global Polio Eradication
Initiative.
He said there were other reasons for the rise of polio in Pakistan,
including the impact of militancy in some parts of the country.
Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks
on the workers and police assigned to the inoculation drives.
Militants in Pakistan often target police and health workers during
campaigns against polio, claiming the vaccination drives are a
Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
More than 200 polio workers and police assigned for their protection
have been killed since the 1990s, according to health officials and
authorities.
Earlier this month, a bomb attached to a motorcycle exploded near a
vehicle carrying police officers assigned to protect polio workers
in Balochistan, killing nine people including five children.
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