Polio Cases in Pakistan 2015 — Recovery After the 2014 Peak

Pakistan recorded 54 wild poliovirus cases in 2015, down from 306 the previous year — a fall of roughly 82 per cent in twelve months, and one of the sharpest single-year reductions any endemic country has achieved.

What produced the turnaround

2015 was the first full year in which the reformed programme structure operated. Three changes mattered most.

• Access restored. Military operations in North Waziristan ended the vaccination ban that had left children unimmunised since 2012. Displaced families were vaccinated at transit points and in camps, reaching a cohort that had been unreachable for two years.
• Emergency operations centres. The national and provincial EOC model put government and partner staff on one floor with one data set, which shortened the gap between finding a problem and acting on it.
• Campaign quality monitoring. Independent post-campaign monitoring and finger-marking checks made it far harder for a district to report coverage it had not achieved.

Where cases still occurred

The residual transmission stayed in the same reservoirs that had driven 2014: the tribal areas and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, urban Sindh around Karachi, and the Quetta block in Balochistan. The pattern established here — a small number of persistent districts rather than nationwide spread — has held ever since.

The travel requirement

2015 was also the first full year under the WHO temporary recommendations issued in May 2014, which require residents and long-term visitors of infected countries to carry documented proof of polio vaccination for international travel. That requirement has been extended continuously and still applies — see the NADRA polio certificate guide and traveller FAQs.

How it fits the longer record

2015 began a four-year decline that took Pakistan to 20 cases in 2016, 8 in 2017 and 12 in 2018 — before the sharp reversal of 2019. For the complete year-by-year series see polio cases by province.