Karachi: Federal Health Minister Mustafa Kamal has cautioned that Sindh could face thousands of polio cases after all environmental samples collected from Karachi and other districts tested positive for the virus.
Addressing the media on Saturday, Kamal stressed that the situation could worsen if children across the province are not vaccinated without delay. He appealed to parents to ensure mandatory immunisation of their children, warning that negligence could reverse progress against polio.
The minister noted that vaccination teams were unable to operate in certain areas due to security challenges, which significantly hampered immunisation efforts. As a result, Pakistan’s final nationwide polio campaign of 2025 fell short of its goal.
Although the campaign achieved 98.6 percent coverage, nearly 900,000 children were left unvaccinated. Conducted from December 15 to 21, the drive—like all other national and sub-national campaigns this year—failed to reach complete coverage.
Official figures show that 872,776 children missed vaccination during the campaign. Of these, 669,326 were unavailable when teams visited their homes. Security-related issues and boycotts prevented vaccination of 148,774 children, while 54,676 parents declined the polio drops.
Provincial statistics reveal that Punjab recorded over 331,000 unvaccinated children, followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with nearly 250,000. Sindh reported 238,982 missed children, while Balochistan accounted for 43,339.
In the federal capital, around 6,000 children were not immunised. Meanwhile, 3,026 children in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,272 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir also missed vaccination.
Parental refusal remained a major challenge, with Sindh reporting 32,947 such cases, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded 21,085 refusals.
