Pakistan has vaccinated more than 29.3 million children under five in a concentrated effort to eliminate polio, despite ongoing security and access hurdles that highlight the fragile progress in the country’s eradication drive.
Pakistan’s latest polio drive has reached more than 29.3 million children under five, according to the Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative, as authorities continue their push to stop the virus from circulating in the country.
The week-long sub-national campaign ran from September 21 to 27 across 113 districts and was aimed at children who had been missed before, including those with no previous doses, mobile families and other higher-risk groups. The initiative said more than 273,000 frontline workers went door to door to deliver the oral polio vaccine, with support from provincial and district administrations, health departments, law-enforcement agencies and partner organisations.
Pakistan has sharply reduced polio since the early 1990s, when the country recorded an estimated 20,000 cases a year, the initiative said. It said paralytic polio cases have fallen by 99.8 per cent, to 31 in 2025 and six so far in 2026, with four of this year’s cases reported in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where security-related access problems have left some children unvaccinated. Reuters has previously reported that repeated immunisation campaigns remain central to Pakistan’s effort to eliminate the disease.
The September campaign was the fourth polio vaccination round of 2026 and the second sub-national drive of the year. In February, Pakistan launched its first nationwide campaign of 2026, targeting 45 million children across 159 districts, while a May sub-national round covered 79 high-risk districts and was later said to have vaccinated more than 18.6 million children. The latest effort was also synchronised with vaccination activities in Afghanistan, reflecting continued cross-border coordination.
Preliminary figures show the largest share of vaccinations came in Sindh and Punjab, with more than 10.14 million children immunised in Sindh and over 9.07 million in Punjab. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa accounted for more than 7.21 million vaccinations, while Balochistan reported more than 2.32 million. Smaller totals were recorded in Islamabad and Gilgit-Baltistan. The initiative said coverage reached the target in all 113 covered districts, although 627,776 children, or 2.1 per cent of the overall target, were still missed after follow-up visits.
Officials said the campaign’s result underlined both the scale of Pakistan’s vaccination effort and the fragility of progress as long as access gaps remain in some areas. Pakistan Today reported in July that the proportion of environmental samples testing positive for poliovirus had fallen sharply in the first half of 2026, a sign that surveillance and vaccination efforts are improving, though the country still faces the risk of renewed transmission.
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