Pakistan reports ninth polio case of year

Islamabad: Pakistan on Saturday reported the ninth polio case of the year, jolting the country's efforts to eradicate the crippling disease.

The fresh case was reported in Balochistan province's Zhob district, Geo News reported.

The victim was a one-and-a-half-year-old child hailing from Zhob’s Hassanzai area, it said.

The Prime Minister’s coordinator on National Health Services, Dr Malik Mukhtar Ahmad, said nine children had been affected by poliovirus in the country this year, according to the report.

Prime Minister’s Focal Person on Polio, Ayesha Raza Farooq, advised people to get their children administered anti-polio doses, asserting that multiple doses were the most effective way to prevent the disease.

The Pakistan government carried out six anti-poliovirus drives this year, said the National Emergency Operations Centre for Polio Eradication coordinator, Muhammad Anwar Ul Haq.

“Various strategies are being adopted to protect children from the disease,” he was quoted as saying.

The fresh case comes almost a month after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met Bill Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and renewed the pledge to wipe polio out of the country.

“We are grateful for the continued partnership and collaboration with the Gates Foundation and our global polio partners. Our partners need to know that we will leave no stone unturned to eliminate polio, to ensure universal financial inclusion through technology, to ensure that we bridge the gender gap, and to take advantage of the opportunities offered by climate adaptation,” Sharif had said.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries in the world where polio remains endemic, according to the World Health Organisation.