Pakistan has confirmed its ninth case of wild poliovirus this year, a seven-month-old boy from Khyber district, as Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered a coordinated national plan to be drawn up within a week.
The case was confirmed on Thursday by the Regional Reference Laboratory in Islamabad. The child is from Union Council Mastak in Bara tehsil, and is the third case reported from Khyber district this year and the seventh from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Genetic analysis of the virus found in all three Khyber cases shows links with strains circulating in Afghanistan, where 50 cases have been reported in 2026. Health officials say the pattern points to continued cross-border transmission of the virus.
The prime minister issued his direction at a review meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office on Thursday, telling federal health officials and the polio team to visit all four provinces, consult the chief ministers and chief secretaries, and prepare a coordinated strategy and plan within seven days. “We must move forward with a better strategy and intensified struggle against polio than before,” he said, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Of the nine cases recorded in Pakistan this year, seven are in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, three each in Khyber and Bannu and one in North Waziristan, and two are in Sindh, in Karachi East and Sujawal. The country recorded 74 cases in 2024 and 31 in 2025. The eighth case of this year was confirmed on November 1, a 13-month-old girl, also from Khyber.
A nationwide vaccination campaign is already under way, running from November 2 to 8 and targeting around 24 million children under five across 97 districts. Health teams are going door to door, and officials have appealed to parents to make sure their children receive the drops.
Thursday’s case is separate from two other polio stories this month: the start of the November vaccination drive, and the attack on a polio team in Mohmand on November 3, in which two guards were killed. Read the Mohmand attack report here. The new case is a fresh infection, not a development in either of those incidents.
