KARACHI: The first polio case of the year in Sindh has been confirmed in a two-year-old girl of a Pakhtun family that had migrated to Karachi eight months ago, officials said on Saturday.

The provincial health department received a report from the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad, only a day ago that confirmed the virus in a 24-month-old girl who had received polio boosters in special campaigns, the officials added.

Muzaifa, daughter of Mohammad Sarwar, is a resident of Ittehad Colony, Baldia Town, which has already been categorised among the ‘most sensitive’ neighbourhoods by the government vis-à-vis polio immunisation.

The officials said the family had migrated eight months ago to Karachi from the country’s troubled northwest which recorded close to 100 polio cases since January 2013.

“We had sent her stool samples to the NIH last month and received its report on Friday, confirming the poliovirus attack,” said a senior health official.

Since January last year, the girl is the ninth victim from Karachi and third from its least covered Baldia neighbourhood, which, together with Gadap town, has been resisting polio vaccination drives.

Also the victims of poliovirus, a 23-month boy and a four-month-old girl from Baldia had died late last year before the result of their stool samples had arrived.

Frequent polio cases being detected in the province have perturbed the health officials, as four cases had been recorded till the mid of November 2013 while seven more cases — six in Karachi and another in Kashmore — have been detected in less than five months since then.

They said the situation was not satisfactory at all despite the renewed immunization campaigns being carried out here after repeated attacks on vaccinators.

In January, a special polio drive to inoculate children of 40 ‘sensitive’ union councils of the metropolis had been abandoned when three vaccinators had been gunned down in a drive-by shooting.

Since then the government has launched special immunisation campaigns on Sundays in the least-covered neighbourhoods.

Last year the total number of polio cases in Pakistan rose to 93 as compared to 58 in 2012; the number of infected districts/towns/tribal agencies/ areas in the country was 20 as compared to 28 the preceding year.

This year some 30 cases have already been reported from the federally-administered tribal areas (Fata).

“Some 83pc of the total polio cases are from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally-Administered Tribal Areas,” said a Unicef report.

In Karachi, Gadap and Baldia are the areas where positive samples were still surfacing.

An official said the nationwide campaign to inoculate 35 million children in the country had been successfully completed but many areas in Karachi were yet to be covered.