A seven-month-old child in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Khyber district has tested positive for polio, bringing Pakistan's tally to nine cases in 2026, health officials confirmed on Thursday. The child — who is not being named — belongs to Union Council Mastak in Bara tehsil of Khyber district, according to the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) for Polio Eradication.

Source: The News (reporting the NEOC)

This is the third polio case reported from Khyber district this year and the seventh from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, while Sindh has recorded two cases. Genetic evidence linked the virus to strains circulating in neighbouring Afghanistan, and officials said genetic analysis of the poliovirus detected in all three Khyber district cases this year showed links with Afghan strains, highlighting the continued threat of cross-border transmission.

Source: The News (reporting the NEOC)

One epidemiological block, two countries

Pakistan and Afghanistan remain the only two countries in the world where wild poliovirus transmission has never been interrupted. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has repeatedly identified the two as a single epidemiological block for polio eradication, stressing that transmission in either country poses risks to the other. Frequent population movements across the border, inaccessible communities, security challenges and gaps in childhood vaccination continue to complicate eradication efforts, officials said.

Source: The News

The WHO has also raised concerns over restrictions affecting house-to-house vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, particularly in southern provinces, where vaccination has largely been conducted at designated sites rather than through household visits — arrangements that can leave infants and children in remote communities unvaccinated. In Pakistan, environmental surveillance has detected poliovirus in sewage samples from the Peshawar block, including Peshawar and Khyber districts, indicating the virus continues to circulate despite repeated campaigns.

Source: The News

The campaign runs under armed threat in the province: earlier this week, gunmen killed police officers protecting polio teams in Mohmand district. Read: Police killed guarding polio team in Pakistan

A 24-million-child campaign is under way

The new case was confirmed in the middle of a seven-day polio vaccination campaign running from November 2 to 8, targeting approximately 24 million children under five across 97 districts. Federal Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal has urged parents to ensure every eligible child receives the oral polio vaccine during the campaign, regardless of previous vaccination history. The Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative's standard response to a confirmed case is a case investigation and targeted vaccination activity in the affected area, as it launched after the previous Khyber case last week.

Source: The News; campaign detail also in Lead Pakistan

Officials said the decline in cases from 74 in 2024 to nine so far this year was encouraging, but warned that continued detection of the virus in children and environmental samples showed the threat had not been eliminated. What happens next turns on the current campaign: until transmission is interrupted in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, health officials warn, children on either side of the border remain vulnerable to a disease that can cause irreversible paralysis but is entirely preventable through vaccination.