Pakistan begins week-long polio campaign today, aiming to vaccinate nearly 24 million children in 97 districts
Pakistan’s sub-national polio vaccination campaign runs from 2 to 8 November, targeting nearly 24 million children under five in 97 selected districts with more than 200,000 frontline workers, days after the country confirmed its eighth polio case of 2026.
Pakistan begins a week-long sub-national polio vaccination campaign today, 2 November, aiming to protect nearly 24 million children under the age of five across 97 selected districts. The campaign, which runs until 8 November, will deploy more than 200,000 frontline polio workers who will visit households to administer the oral polio vaccine.
The drive covers all districts of Karachi and a wide spread of districts across the provinces, with the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) for Polio Eradication coordinating the effort. Parents and caregivers are being urged to ensure that every child under five receives the drops during the campaign, regardless of how many doses the child has already received, and to complete routine immunisation schedules on time.
In Balochistan, the provincial Emergency Operations Centre said the campaign would cover 31 districts and target more than 2.2 million children. Provincial coordinator Inam Ul Haq said teams would work across the province from Monday, as part of the same nationwide sub-national round, with the aim of reaching children in both urban centres and remote areas where routine coverage can be patchy.
The campaign was formally inaugurated by Federal Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal, who administered polio drops to children at the NEOC in Islamabad ahead of the launch. It is the third sub-national immunisation round of 2026, and follows a September sub-national campaign that vaccinated more than 29.3 million children across the country.
First Lady Bibi Asifa Bhutto Zardari, in a message marking the start of the campaign, said all parents and caregivers should make sure every child under five receives polio drops during the round. She said Pakistan had reduced polio cases by 99.8 per cent since the national eradication programme began in 1994, but that the virus was still circulating, and that the goal was to make Pakistan polio-free by June 2027.
The urgency of the round was underlined days ago when Pakistan confirmed its eighth polio case of 2026, a 13-month-old girl from Union Council Janbaz-B in Tehsil Bara, Khyber district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It was the second case reported from Khyber district this year and the sixth from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with the other two cases reported from Sindh. The Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative has launched a case investigation and is assessing targeted vaccination and routine immunisation measures to prevent further transmission.
Polio is an incurable disease, but it is entirely preventable through vaccination, health officials stress, and repeated doses are essential because children in high-risk areas can remain vulnerable until immunity is high across the whole community. That is why campaigns are repeated several times a year: a single round is not enough to close immunity gaps, especially in areas where the virus has been detected in the environment or in children.
Pakistan has already conducted four large-scale polio campaigns so far in 2026, protecting more than 45 million children multiple times, alongside smaller targeted campaigns in high-risk areas, including the Peshawar Block. The scale of the effort reflects how close, and yet how far, the country remains from eradication: from an estimated 20,000 cases in the early 1990s, Pakistan recorded 31 cases in 2025, and eight so far this year.
Health officials have also appealed to community leaders, religious scholars, civil society organisations and other stakeholders to support vaccination teams and help address barriers to immunisation, including misinformation and access problems in insecure or hard-to-reach areas. Frontline workers, who often face difficult conditions and security risks, are central to the campaign’s success, and officials have asked communities to welcome teams and cooperate with them.
For parents, the message is simple: when a vaccination team visits, or at a nearby vaccination point, every child under five should receive two drops, even if the child was vaccinated in a previous round. The campaign runs until 8 November, and health authorities say reaching every eligible child in these 97 districts is the surest way to stop the virus spreading further and to keep Pakistan on course for a polio-free future.
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