Polio Online Resources — Research, Data and Official Guidance

This page points to the sources the Pakistan polio programme itself uses and publishes. It is intended for journalists, students, researchers, health workers and anyone who wants the primary material rather than a summary of it.

Global guidance and policy

• World Health Organization — polio fact sheets, position papers on OPV and IPV, and the statements issued after each meeting of the Polio IHR Emergency Committee. Those statements are the source of the travel vaccination requirement described in the certificate guide.
• Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) — the strategic plans, weekly case counts for both endemic countries, and the country pages for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the periodic "Progress Toward Poliomyelitis Eradication — Pakistan" reports in MMWR, which are the most detailed independent assessments of the programme published anywhere.

Pakistan national documents

• National Emergency Action Plan (NEAP) — the operational plan agreed between federal and provincial governments and the eradication partners, reissued as circumstances change. Successive editions are collected in Knowledge Centre reports.
• Technical Advisory Group reports — independent expert reviews of programme performance with specific recommendations.
• NEOC updates and newsletters — the programme's own periodic reporting on campaigns, cases and surveillance, archived under Pakistan polio update.

Data on this site

• District-wise polio cases — the current year's cases by district.
• Polio cases by province — the long-run series from the 1990s to the present.
• High-risk areas and risk tiers — how districts are classified and prioritised.
• Surveillance — how AFP and environmental sampling work.

Training and campaign material

Material produced for frontline teams and community workers includes vaccine administration training — see the IPV administration training video — along with campaign creative and community engagement resources. Visual material is collected in the picture gallery and video gallery.

How to use these sources well

Two cautions worth stating. First, polio case counts change as laboratory confirmation catches up with reporting, so a figure quoted in one week may be revised in the next — always note the as-of date. Second, environmental surveillance positivity and case counts measure different things; a fall in cases alongside continued sewage positivity means transmission is continuing, not ending. Both indicators need reading together.