Pakistan and Afghanistan Agree on Joint Anti-Polio Strategy

Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed a joint strategy on polio eradication — a recognition of something the virus had already demonstrated: the border is a political line, not an epidemiological one.

One epidemiological block

The two countries are the last places on earth where wild poliovirus type 1 has never been interrupted, and the eradication partnership treats them as a single epidemiological block. Genetic sequencing of virus isolates regularly shows strains moving in both directions — virus detected in Kandahar turning up in Balochistan, virus from southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa appearing in eastern Afghanistan.

The reason is straightforward. Families move continuously across the Pak-Afghan border for trade, labour, family ties and seasonal migration, through crossings such as Torkham and Chaman. A vaccination strategy that stops at the border simply waits for reinfection.

What joint working actually means

• Synchronised campaign timing. When both programmes run campaigns in the same window, a family that crosses the border mid-round is still reached rather than falling between two schedules.
• Shared surveillance data. Sequencing results, case data and environmental surveillance findings are shared so both programmes can see where the virus is actually travelling.
• Transit point vaccination. Pakistan operates around 500 permanent transit points on borders, highways, bus terminals and railway stations, vaccinating children while families are in motion.
• Common technical standards. Aligned campaign methods and monitoring so results from the two sides are comparable.

Why it took agreement rather than just good sense

Cross-border coordination requires sustained political cooperation between two governments whose wider relationship is frequently strained, and it has to survive border closures, security incidents and large-scale population movements. That it has been maintained across successive changes on both sides is one of the less-discussed achievements of the eradication effort.

The current position

At its forty-fifth meeting in August 2026, the WHO Polio IHR Emergency Committee reported four wild poliovirus cases in Afghanistan and Pakistan's continuing transmission, and again extended the Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Pakistan closed 2025 with 31 cases; Afghanistan reported 21 in the same year.

Better regulated cross-border movement in recent years has improved the programme's ability to reach mobile children at transit points, but the fundamental dynamic is unchanged: neither country finishes alone.

Related

Pak-Afghan teams working jointly · vaccinating the Pak-Afghan border · global polio and Pakistan