LAHORE (Dunya News) - With a polio case surfaced in Chakwal, Punjab has reported the first case of contagious viral disease in the current year, Dunya News reported here on Saturday.
According to the National Institute of Public Health (NIH), a six-year-old child of Chakwal has been diagnosed with polio virus.
This is the 12th polio case in Pakistan reported so far in this year.
According to NIH, so far two polio cases were reported in Sindh and nine in Balochistan.
It should be noted that in April this year, polio virus was confirmed in 12 sewage samples from 8 cities across the country.
Sources claimed that the polio virus was found in the sewage of Karachi, Quetta, Usta Muhammad and Sibbi, Peshawar, Mastung, Naseerabad and Kohat.
Pakistan is one of only two countries in the world where polio is still endemic, the other being neighbouring Afghanistan, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The highly contagious viral disease largely affects children under the age of five. Children infected by poliovirus can suffer paralysis and in some cases death.
The South Asian nation launched a vaccination programme as part of its Polio Eradication Programme in 1994. Officials say the country used to report more than 20,000 cases annually.
Despite administering more than 300 million doses of the oral vaccine annually and spending billions of dollars, the disease is still rife across Pakistan.
This year, four vaccination campaigns targeting more than 43 million children have already been undertaken as authorities claim they are in the “last mile” of their fight against polio in the country of 235 million people.