A seven-month-old child in Khyber district has become Pakistan’s ninth polio victim this year, with health authorities confirming that genetic testing directly links the virus to strains actively spreading across the border in Afghanistan.
The infant, from Union Council Mastak in Bara tehsil, represents the third polio case from Khyber district in 2026 and underscores a troubling reality: despite vaccination efforts, the crippling disease continues finding vulnerable children in border regions where Pakistan and Afghanistan’s intertwined health crisis plays out.
National Emergency Operations Centre officials revealed that all three Khyber district cases this year share genetic markers with Afghan poliovirus strains, providing concrete evidence of cross-border transmission that health experts have long warned about. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has now recorded seven of Pakistan’s nine cases, with Sindh accounting for the remaining two.
The genetic connection to Afghanistan highlights why Pakistan cannot defeat polio alone. The two nations remain the only countries worldwide where wild poliovirus has never been stopped, creating what the World Health Organisation calls a single epidemiological block—meaning the virus circulating in one country inevitably threatens the other.
Constant movement of people across the porous border, combined with communities that vaccination teams cannot reach due to security concerns or geographical isolation, creates perfect conditions for the virus to survive and spread. In Afghanistan, restrictions on house-to-house vaccination campaigns have forced health workers to rely on fixed vaccination sites, an approach that leaves countless infants and children in remote areas unprotected.
Yet Pakistani health officials stress that blaming Afghanistan alone oversimplifies the challenge. Poliovirus continues circulating within Pakistan’s own communities, as evidenced by sewage samples from Peshawar and Khyber districts that repeatedly test positive. Children missed during vaccination drives and pockets of inadequate immunity allow the disease to persist even without cross-border transmission.
The numbers tell a story of progress and persistent danger. Pakistan recorded 74 polio cases in 2024, which dropped to 31 in 2025, and now stands at nine for 2026. While the downward trend offers hope, health authorities warn that detecting the virus in both children and environmental samples proves the threat remains very much alive.
A nationwide seven-day vaccination campaign launched November 2 aims to reach approximately 24 million children under five across 97 districts. Federal Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal has urged parents to vaccinate every eligible child during the drive, emphasizing that repeated doses are crucial regardless of previous vaccination history.
Health experts emphasize that building strong immunity requires multiple vaccine doses, particularly in high-risk border districts where exposure to the virus remains constant. Until transmission stops completely in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, children on either side of the border face the risk of a disease that causes irreversible paralysis but can be entirely prevented through vaccination.
The path to eradication demands reaching every missed child, strengthening routine immunisation programs, and maintaining effective coordination with Afghanistan—a complex challenge requiring sustained commitment from families, health workers, and governments on both sides of the border.
