Karachi polio virus infects Quetta boy

E-Paper | March 15, 2026

QUETTA: Polio virus detected in a 30-month-old boy of Quetta does not match with samples from local sewage system but those of Karachi, provincial coordinator at the Emergency Operation Centre told journalists on Thursday.

Genetic sequencing had shown that this year’s first polio case of Balochistan, detected a couple of days ago in Mohammad Ikram, son of Jumma Khan, matched with the virus found in Gadap area of Karachi and not a local virus, Dr Saifur Rehman said.

Moreover, the virus found in environmental samples from the site of Hadi Picket in Qila Abdullah was from Helmand province of Afghanistan and not from Chaman, he added.

Most probably, the virus travelled from Helmand to the border town of Chaman, he said.

Dr Rehman added that someone definitely brought the virus from Karachi and infected Ikram with it.

He was of the view that children in Balochistan were vulnerable to the disease because the province was located between two high-risk areas —Karachi and Kandahar.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2016

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By the way who brings polio virus to Karachi. The same people who resist their children from being vaccinated during polio immunization campaign. Who knows the boy belonged to Quetta came to Karachi, lived among his relatives or siblings, caught virus and returned to home town. It is the failure of government that it has not established vaccination center inter-provincial highways so that every individual travelling from one part to the other in country be vaccinated first. If they deny it, they be off-loaded and made return to their home towns. We need strict measure to prevent the virus from being spread to other parts of the country.

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