Pakistan Reports Third Polio Case of 2025

Pakistan's National Emergency Operations Centre confirmed the country's third wild poliovirus case of 2025.

The detail that matters most

Every case investigation reconstructs the paralysed child's vaccination history — how many doses of oral polio vaccine they received, when, and why any were missed. In the overwhelming majority of Pakistani cases the answer is the same: the child was unvaccinated or had received too few doses.

This is not a marginal finding. It means polio paralysis in Pakistan is, case by case, a failure to reach a specific child rather than a failure of the vaccine. And because children who are missed are usually missed repeatedly, the investigation almost always finds other under-vaccinated children in the same household or street.

Why children get missed

• Access. In parts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, campaigns cannot run at all for security reasons. This is currently the single largest driver of Pakistan's remaining cases.
• Absence. In dense urban areas, the dominant reason is that the child simply was not at home when the team called — repeatedly. A child recorded as "not available" is an unvaccinated child.
• Mobility. Families moving for work, seasonal migration or cross-border travel fall outside household-based microplans.
• Refusal. A smaller share overall, but concentrated in exactly the communities where transmission persists.

The response

Emergency house-to-house vaccination around the case, active search for other paralysis in the community, expanded environmental sampling, and genetic sequencing of the virus to establish how it travelled. Where sequencing shows a strain closely related to virus found in another district, the response extends there too.

The year

2025 ended with 31 confirmed cases, against 74 in 2024. By September 2026 the running total stood at four, with three of those from the Bannu division in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

For parents

If your child was away when the team last called, do not wait for the next round — take them to a fixed vaccination point or a health facility. Two drops, every round, for every child under five, plus the full routine EPI schedule. Call 1166 if a team does not reach you.

Related: district-wise cases · polio FAQs · eradication strategy