Pakistani health authorities have detected a polio virus in a child in the country’s first case of the crippling disease in 2024, an official said on Friday, in a setback for global eradication efforts.
The virus crippled the lower limbs of the 30-month-old child in the country’s south-western province of Balochistan, said doctor Shahzad Baig, chief of Pakistan’s anti-polio programme.
The infection was the first case of polio virus in the region in more than two years, posing a fresh challenge for the eradication programme that is funded jointly by the UN and Gates Foundation.
Polio cases in Pakistan peaked at 147 in 2019 but declined to only six last year, rekindling hopes that the virus could be eradicated from the last global hotspot along with neighbouring Afghanistan.
Pakistan undertakes periodic immunization drives to administer polio drops to children under the age of five.
But the campaign is often targeted by the Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda and the affiliated Taliban.
The militants and some Islamic clerics claim the polio vaccination campaign is a ploy by the West to sterilize Muslims.