Pakistan reports ninth polio case of 2026 as seven-month-old boy in Khyber tests positive
Pakistan has reported its ninth wild poliovirus case of 2026 after a seven-month-old boy in Khyber district tested positive, with health officials linking the virus to strains circulating in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Pakistan has reported its ninth wild poliovirus case of 2026 after a seven-month-old boy in Khyber district tested positive, health officials confirmed on Thursday. The case, detected in a child from Mastak Union Council in Bara tehsil, is the third reported from Khyber district this year and the seventh from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, underscoring how stubbornly the virus continues to circulate in the province even as overall case numbers fall.
The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication in Islamabad confirmed the infection, and the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) for Polio Eradication said the virus detected in the child carries genetic linkages to strains circulating in Afghanistan. That cross-border connection is significant: Afghanistan has reported 50 polio cases this year, and health officials say continued movement of people across the shared border keeps reintroducing the virus into Pakistani communities.
The case was confirmed in the middle of a nationwide vaccination campaign running from 2 to 8 November, which is targeting nearly 24 million children under the age of five across 97 high-risk districts. The campaign is being conducted simultaneously in Pakistan and Afghanistan as part of coordinated cross-border eradication efforts, with vaccination teams going door to door to reach every child in the targeted areas.
Health authorities used the announcement to renew their appeal to parents to make sure every child under five receives the polio drops during the campaign. The NEOC stressed that consistent vaccination is essential to protect children, particularly while the week-long drive is under way, because a single missed child can keep the virus alive in a community and allow it to spread to others.
The Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative has launched a comprehensive investigation into the latest case and is assessing science-based measures to interrupt virus transmission in the area. Such investigations typically trace the child's contacts, check vaccination coverage in the surrounding union councils and look for gaps in the campaign's reach that may have left children unprotected.
The new case follows the eighth case of the year, a 13-month-old girl also from Khyber district, reported at the start of the current campaign on 2 November. The two cases, both from the same district within days of each other, suggest the virus is actively circulating in parts of Khyber, and officials will be watching closely for further detections in the coming weeks.
The broader picture shows how far Pakistan has come, and how far it still has to go. The country reported 74 polio cases in 2024 and 31 in 2025, and nine so far this year, including seven from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and two from Sindh. That is a reduction of 99.8 per cent from an estimated 20,000 cases in the early 1990s, yet the persistence of even a handful of cases means the virus has not been stopped.
The campaign is also taking place against a difficult security backdrop. Two police officers guarding polio workers were shot dead in Mohmand district on Tuesday, a day after four officers protecting vaccination teams were kidnapped in Tank. The violence is a reminder of the risks faced by the vaccination teams and their security escorts, and of the challenges in reaching children in the areas where the virus is most entrenched.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where wild poliovirus remains endemic, and global health agencies have long pointed to the border region between them as the toughest remaining battleground in the eradication effort. The genetic link between the latest Pakistani case and Afghan strains illustrates why neither country can finish the job alone, and why the synchronised campaigns on both sides of the border matter.
What happens next will depend on how completely the current campaign reaches children in Khyber and other high-risk districts, and on whether surveillance picks up further cases in the weeks ahead. Officials say every child vaccinated this week brings the country closer to stopping transmission, but the ninth case of the year is a reminder that the final stretch of eradication is the hardest, and that the virus will exploit any gap left behind.
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