ISLAMABAD: The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director Dr. Hanan Balkhy said on Monday that Pakistan has a “genuine opportunity” to interrupt polio transmission provided it intensifies its efforts to do so within the next six to 12 months.
Pakistan happens to be one of only two countries in the world where polio, a highly contagious viral disease that can cause irreversible paralysis and in some cases death, is endemic. It is preventable through repeated doses of the oral polio vaccine.
Pakistan has reduced polio cases by 99.8 percent — from an estimated 20,000 cases in the early 1990s to 31 cases in 2025 and three so far in 2026 — through periodic nationwide vaccination campaigns.
Balkhy is visiting Pakistan with the Polio Oversight Board (POB) to help strengthen the country’s polio response. The WHO official said the goal of ending polio transmission in Pakistan and the region is “now within reach” with sustained and coordinated efforts.
“Discussions with national authorities and experts, together with the available evidence, show that Pakistan has a genuine opportunity to interrupt poliovirus transmission,” WHO quoted her as saying.
“But this opportunity will only be realized if we intensify our efforts over the next 6 to 12 months – a period that will be critical.”
According to WHO, Pakistan’s polio response is guided by medical science and backed by the world’s largest and most sensitive polio surveillance network, with more than 12,500 acute flaccid paralysis reporting sites and 127 environmental surveillance sites.
The visiting POB delegation also met frontline women polio workers. POB is the highest decision-making and oversight body of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a global public-private partnership working with national governments to eradicate polio globally.
Pakistan’s polio eradication program launched in 1994, has faced repeated setbacks due to vaccine misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners, who claim immunization is a foreign plot to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western espionage.
Militant groups have also frequently targeted polio vaccination teams, prompting the government to assign security personnel to protect them, though it has not stopped deadly attacks, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
