Pakistan fails to achieve polio-free target in 2018

All three cases emerged from Balochistan's Dukki district

Pakistan has failed to achieve the target of a polio-free country in 2018 despite conducting a full-fledged anti-polio campaign for the last five months.

Twenty cases were reported in 2016, eight cases in 2017 and till date in 2018 three cases have been reported. All the three cases have emerged from Dukki district of Balochistan.



In April, the government launched a nationwide polio vaccination drive to reach 38.7 million children to eradicate the paralysing and potentially deadly virus. Reported cases have steadily declined since 2014 when 306 were reported.

Efforts to eradicate the disease have been undermined by opposition from the Taliban and other militants, who term immunisation a foreign ploy to sterilise Muslim children or provide cover for Western spies.

In January, gunmen killed a vaccination team, comprising a mother and her daughter, working in Balochistan. Three years earlier, 15 people were killed in a bombing by the Pakistani Taliban outside a polio vaccination centre in Balochistan.