NEOC: The Polio Vaccine Is Safe, Effective, and Protects Against Lifelong Paralysis

Pakistan's National Emergency Operations Centre has restated, repeatedly and unambiguously, that the polio vaccine is safe, effective, and the only protection against lifelong paralysis.

What the evidence is

Oral polio vaccine is among the most extensively administered medicines in human history — billions of doses given worldwide over more than sixty years. It is the reason wild poliovirus has been eliminated from 123 of the 125 countries where it circulated when the global eradication effort began in 1988, and the reason wild types 2 and 3 no longer exist anywhere.

Its safety profile is correspondingly well characterised, across more settings and more decades than almost any other intervention in public health.

What is actually in it

Campaign vaccine in Pakistan is bivalent oral polio vaccine (bOPV): weakened poliovirus types 1 and 3, in two drops given by mouth. Inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), used in routine immunisation, contains killed virus and is given as an injection. Neither contains any ingredient that renders it impermissible, a point affirmed by Pakistani and international religious scholars including the Council of Islamic Ideology and the Islamic Advisory Group convened under the OIC.

The vaccine does not cause infertility. This claim has circulated in Pakistan for years and has no basis of any kind.

Why children need it more than once

Each oral dose gives partial protection; immunity builds over several doses. In areas with heavy diarrhoeal disease and poor sanitation, more doses are needed to achieve the same protection, because gut infections interfere with how well the vaccine takes.

This is the answer to the most common question at the door: the team is not repeating itself unnecessarily. A child who has had drops five times is genuinely better protected than one who has had them twice, and campaigns also catch children born since the last round.

The alternative

There is no treatment for polio. Physiotherapy, braces and surgery can improve function, but nerve cells destroyed by the virus do not regenerate. A child paralysed at two years old is paralysed at fifty.

Roughly one poliovirus infection in two hundred causes that paralysis. The other 199 children recover — and shed virus that can paralyse someone else's child. Vaccination protects both.

What families should do

Two drops for every child under five in every campaign round, including children who were vaccinated last month. Complete the routine immunisation schedule, which is what provides lasting protection. If a mild illness is the concern — a cold, a fever, diarrhoea — the drops are still safe; ask the team if unsure. If a team does not reach your household, call 1166.

Related: polio FAQs · ulema on the vaccine · parental refusals