PESHAWAR: As the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department continued to vaccinate children on the fifth round of the Sehat ka Insaf programme on Saturday, two more polio cases were reported in North Waziristan Agency and Frontier Region Bannu each.

The new cases took the number of the children affected by polio this year in the country to 24, according to the officials.

The officials told Dawn that both the newly-infected children had not received any dose of oral polio vaccine.

They said of the 24 polio cases, 21 were reported in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and three in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

According to the officials, the immunisation campaign in Peshawar district continued in all 92 Union Councils amid tight security on Saturday.

They said 5,750 policemen and 8,048 vaccinators took part in the campaign by visiting 339,186 houses to administer anti-polio drops to 650,405 children against the target of 741,259 children.

The officials said the number of children missing vaccination came to 48,639.

They said Pakistan had been facing an uphill task of administering oral polio vaccine to children in North Waziristan and Khyber agencies, Karachi and Peshawar.

According to the officials, Peshawar has been showing signs of improvement in the wake of the Sehat ka Insaf programme, where repeated vaccination of children is underway.