PESHAWAR: Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) has enhanced the coverage of vaccination from 93 per cent in February’s polio campaign to 98 per cent in April in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to data.

Authorities concerned say the credit for the successful polio drive carried out from April 21 to 25, goes to Chief Secretary Shahab Ali Shah, who in his capacity as chairman of provincial task force on polio, held several meetings with commissioners, district police officers and district health officers to ensure that all children under five years get drops in every campaign.

“Even during the campaign, chief secretary chaired two review meetings that helped us to improve vaccination coverage,” senior officials told this scribe. They said that in February, the province had recorded 19,070 refusal cases, which dropped to 17,963 in the recent drive owing to active involvement of district administration and police.

They said that during the February’s campaign, they registered 97,743 children, who stayed unvaccinated because they were not available when health workers visited their houses. But this time, their number has dropped to 75819. They number of missed children may be lesser than the recorded ones because in many cases, children visit their relatives or hospitals with mothers where they get vaccinated.

Peshawar continues to record more missed children and refusal cases

“Our teams continue to chase children in hospitals, on roads and in markets. However, Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa continues to record more missed children and refusals for which the government will take more measures in future,” they said.

Peshawar recorded 13,290 missed children and 7,945 refusal cases, Bannu 3,814 and 3,901, Kohat 3,463 and 1036, Dera Ismail Khan 7,198 and 1,492 and Mardan registered 3,662 missed children and 1,012 refusal cases.

“The report will be presented to chief secretary with the request to lay more focus on the districts, which are recording more unvaccinated children,” said officials.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has detected three polio cases in 2025 so far. One case was recorded each from Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu and Torghar districts. The number of nationwide cases stands at eight.

“We deployed 35.460 teams, each team consisting of two persons to cover 6.537 million children with the help of 50,000 policemen, who protected the teams in their house-to-house campaigns. During the campaign, there was no untoward incident and matters went smoothly,” said officials.

They said that protection of their frontline workers was always the main issue. In 2024, 20 people including 16 police constables lost their lives in terrorist attacks during anti-polio campaigns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Fifty three people, including 43 policemen, were injured in such attacks.

In 2025, a policeman on polio duty was killed in Khyber tribal district, while another constable was shot dead in Bajaur tribal district. Overall, 112 people, more than half of whom were policemen, have been killed during polio campaigns, and more than 300 have been injured in the province since 2012.

“Despite looming threats, our police and vaccinators continue to reach children. The number of unvaccinated children is still matter of concern because we need to administer two drops to each child in every campaign till five years of age to ensure eradication of poliovirus,” said officials.

Last year, the country reported 74 cases including 27 in Balochistan, 23 in Sindh, 22 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and one each in Punjab and Islamabad.

Officials said that poliovirus was detected in sewage samples of South Waziristan Lower and Upper recently. “Given the recent success, we hope that situation will further improve and we will reach the target children in future,” they added.

They said that poliomyelitis was the only childhood ailment that could be completely eliminated through vaccination.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2025