First WPV1 Case of 2025 Reported from Dera Ismail Khan

Pakistan's National Emergency Operations Centre confirmed the country's first wild poliovirus type 1 case of 2025, in a child from Dera Ismail Khan in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Why the first case of a year matters

The first confirmation of any year is a diagnostic signal rather than just a statistic. Poliovirus transmission in Pakistan is seasonal, falling in the cooler first months and building through the second half of the year. A case appearing early means the virus survived the low season somewhere — and where it overwintered usually predicts where the year's burden will fall.

In 2025 that prediction held. The year closed with 31 cases, with southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa carrying a substantial share.

Dera Ismail Khan

DI Khan sits in the southern belt of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, bordering the Waziristan districts. It has been among the country's most persistently difficult districts for the same reasons that define the whole southern KP corridor: large-scale population movement, security conditions that interrupt campaigns, and historically uneven routine immunisation coverage.

It is also epidemiologically connected to North and South Waziristan, which means virus circulating in one of these districts rarely stays there. The North Waziristan case record covers that history.

The pattern that followed

By September 2026, Pakistan had reported four wild poliovirus cases for the year — and three of them came from the Bannu division in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The programme has stated plainly that security-related access constraints there have left children missing critical vaccination, allowing the virus to keep circulating.

This is now the single clearest pattern in Pakistan's polio data: the national case count is largely determined by whether campaigns can run in a small number of southern KP union councils.

Outbreak response

Confirmation triggered the standard protocol — emergency house-to-house vaccination across the affected union council and its neighbours, investigation of the child's vaccination history, an active search for other paralysis cases nearby, and expanded environmental sampling to establish how far the virus had already travelled.

For families in southern KP

When a team reaches your area, take the opportunity — in districts where access is intermittent, a missed round may not be repeated for some time. Two drops for every child under five, every round. Complete the routine EPI schedule. If a team does not arrive, call 1166.

Related: high-risk areas · district-wise cases · eradication strategy