Pakistan’s interim health minister Nadeem Jan has said that 90 percent of polio cases in Pakistan are “imported from Afghanistan”, Dawn reported.
Dawn is a Pakistani English language newspaper.
Nadeem’s comments come after two more samples tested positive for polio virus in Pakistan, just a day after the third case was reported this year.
According to an official of the polio laboratory of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), sewage samples collected from Dera Bugti in Balochistan and Peshawar tested positive for the virus. Both viruses found in sewage samples are similar to polio viruses from Afghanistan.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio virus remains endemic. According to officials, the transmission of wild polio virus has been confined to seven districts in the south of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, namely Tank, Bannu, North Waziristan, South Waziristan Upper, South Waziristan Lower, Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat, Dawn reported.
In a report released in August, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that since January 2021, all reported cases were from seven polio-endemic districts in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
first published: 7 October 2023 | 8:36 am First