Pakistan polio cases rise to 6 as disease cripples another child in KP

• A nine-month-old baby was diagnosed in Orakzai district of KP.
• The number of cases in Pakistan reaches six in 2023.
• “This is the fourth case of polio from KP,” says the health minister.

ISLAMABAD: A nine-month-old baby has been diagnosed with polio virus in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Orakzai district, taking the total number of cases in Pakistan to six this year. The news reported on Sunday.

The diagnosis has caused a setback to the government’s stringent efforts to eradicate polio from the country, particularly in KP where the number of cases has increased this year and the latest took the toll to four.

Commenting on the new case detected in KP province, Caretaker Health Minister Dr Nadeem Jan said, “A nine-month-old child from Orakzai district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been paralyzed by polio virus. This is the fourth case of polio from KP and 6 of polio in Pakistan. Earlier, three cases of polio were reported from Bannu and two from Karachi,” he said, speaking to The news on Saturday.

Genetically, according to the minister, this case is 99.7% related to the environmental sample of Lahore (Multan Road), which was collected on September 26, 2023 and is a continuation of the imported complex in 2023. This is the first case since the Orakzai region after almost 12 years.

On the other hand, the Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Islamabad, also confirmed the detection of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) in 20 environmental (wastewater) samples collected in November 2023.

The positive environmental samples were found from Peshawar, three from Karachi East, two each from Quetta, Chaman and Karachi Keamari and one each from Pishin, Karachi Central, Karachi South, Hyderabad, Jamshoro, Bannu and Kohat.

These new detections bring the total number of positive environmental (wastewater) samples in Pakistan in 2023 to 84.

Health authorities in Islamabad were concerned about the performance of polio eradication authorities after the spread of the polio virus, saying they planned to review the polio eradication strategy after the current strategy failed due to the incompetence of program officials.

They said after failing to contain the polio virus, officials of the polio eradication initiative started blaming the increase on malnutrition and infectious diseases, advising the ministries of health and food security to overcome the growing malnutrition in the country.

“In such circumstances, Pakistan cannot eradicate polio from its soil. The spread of polio virus in a period of low transmission is a question mark on the performance of local and international health officials related to the polio eradication program in Pakistan,” said an official of the federal health ministry.