Sehat ka Insaf Immunisation Campaign Launched in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

The Sehat ka Insaf ("health justice") immunisation campaign was launched in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, combining polio vaccination with wider childhood immunisation services, with political leadership fronting the launch in Peshawar.

Why political ownership matters

Polio eradication in Pakistan has repeatedly turned on whether political leadership treats it as their own priority rather than a health department programme. The National Task Force on Polio Eradication exists at head-of-government level for precisely this reason — see the programme structure.

The practical effects are concrete. Political ownership unlocks provincial resources, gets district administrations to treat campaign rounds as accountable commitments, and — most importantly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — brings weight to bear on access constraints that health officials alone cannot resolve.

Why Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

KP has been central to Pakistan's polio problem for as long as the programme has existed. The Peshawar corridor is one of the country's three historical poliovirus reservoirs; the southern districts — Bannu, North and South Waziristan, Dera Ismail Khan, Lakki Marwat, Tank — have produced a disproportionate share of recent cases.

Of the four cases Pakistan confirmed in 2026 up to September, three came from the Bannu division.

The integrated approach

Framing the campaign around childhood immunisation generally rather than polio alone reflects something the programme has learned repeatedly. Communities in underserved districts have a reasonable objection: enormous resources go into polio drops while their children lack basic health services, clean water and functioning clinics.

Delivering routine immunisation, maternal health and nutrition services alongside polio drops answers that objection directly, and changes the household interaction from a repeated request into an exchange. It also addresses the underlying weakness — where routine immunisation coverage is low, campaigns have to work harder every year just to hold position. See low routine immunisation.

What determines whether launches matter

Campaign launches are easy; sustained execution in the same union councils, round after round, through changes of government and competing priorities, is not. Pakistan's volatile case record — 8 cases in 2017, 147 in 2019, 1 in 2021, 74 in 2024 — tracks that consistency far more closely than it tracks any single initiative.

Related: Sehat ka Ittehad · high-risk areas