PESHAWAR: More than 25,000 people refused to vaccinate their children with the anti-polio vaccines in the recently concluded three day immunisation drive in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

According to EPI incharge Raheem Khattak, at least 25,800 parents from 19 districts of KP did not allow the health workers to administer polio drops to their children under the age of five.

Read: Three-day polio immunisation drive kicks off in KP amid tight security

Khattak said that more than 0.2 million children could not be administered the vaccine due to their unavailability at homes while about 4.2 million children were vaccinated in the three day door to door campaign.

A three-day polio immunisation drive kicked off in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province earlier this week, amid tight security.

According to the National Immunisation Database (NID) 14,705 mobile, 1,586 fixed, 737 transit and 107 roaming teams comprising of 17,135 health workers took part in the three-day drive.

The total number of cases registered in Pakistan during the current year are 32, with the last two reported in Khyber Agency.

A report published in Dawn Newspaper on September 8 stated that Fata recorded 179 polio cases and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had 68 cases of the 306 reported countrywide in 2014. In 2013 the tally was 65 and 11 cases respectively, out of the 93 cases registered at national level.

KP also registered 27 cases and Fata had 20 cases of polio in the nationwide tally of 58 cases in 2012.

Fata along with KP was declared the hub of polio virus, which poses risk to children in the countries that had long been declared polio-free.

Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world where polio remains endemic but efforts to eradicate the disease have been severely hindered in recent years as militants continue to attack immunisation teams and polio workers.

Also read: Anti-polio campaign to be carried out every month