Another polio case reported in NWA

12-month-old Nasir Khan, resident of Toor Tanga village in Miranshah, was diagnosed with polio virus, type-1 strain.

PESHAWAR:

Another polio case has surfaced in North Waziristan Agency (NWA), confirmed National Institute of Health (NIH) Islamabad on Sunday.

Twelve-month-old Nasir Khan, a resident of Toor Tanga village in Miranshah, has been diagnosed with polio virus, type-1 strain.

This is the second polio case reported from the agency in the first fifteen days of December; NWA, considered to be the most volatile in the tribal areas, is near impossible for polio teams to access. According to NIH, as with most other cases surfacing from the tribal areas, the infected child had not received a single dose of the oral polio vaccine.

With the new case, the total number of polio cases reported in Pakistan in 2013 has reached 75. Of these, six are from Punjab, seven from Sindh, 10 from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and 52 from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Moreover, the number of polio cases reported from North Waziristan has reached 25.

A reported 0.2 million children in the agency remain vulnerable to the crippling disease owing to the security situation.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 16^th, 2013