Pakistan detects 2nd polio case in a week, triggers concern of possible spike

Islamabad: A two-year-old girl in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province has been tested positive for polio, the second such case in the country in a week, triggering panic among health officials as the virus causing the crippling disease can travel along with people in the massive movement during Eid holidays.

Pakistan is one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with its neighbour Afghanistan. Polio is a highly infectious virus. Until this last remaining epidemiological bloc wipes out polio, children across the globe remain at risk of life-long paralysis or fatality by the virus.

“Today, the Pakistan National Polio Laboratory at the NIH, Islamabad, has confirmed the detection of Type-1 Wild Poliovirus from the stool specimen from a 24-month-old girl from district North Waziristan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The girl had an onset of paralysis on 14 April 2022,” an official statement said on Friday.