QUETTA, Oct 6: A one-year-old girl, who had been vaccinated eight times, was found crippled by polio vaccinators during the recent vaccination campaign.

Hafiza Bibi, whose parents are Afghan refugees, is living in Pashtoonabad in the outskirts of Quetta.

“Over the past year she was vaccinated against polio eight times,” provincial health department officials said.

Sources said that the girl’s father Hafiz Abdullah frequently visited Afghanistan and it was possible that he had brought the virus that paralysed his daughter for life.

This is the first polio case in Quetta since 2006 and it raises the number of victims of the disease in Balochistan to six.

The officials said that in some parts of Balochistan, Afghan refugees were resisting anti-polio campaigns, creating difficulties for health workers, adding that it might lead to an increase in the incidence of the crippling disease.