PM Shehbaz launches first anti-polio drive for 2025

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday launched the first nationwide anti-polio campaign for the year 2025, the Prime Minister’s House (PMO) reported.

The campaign will commerce on February 3 and continue till February 9.

Addressing the launching ceremony, the prime minister reaffirmed his government’s determination to eliminate the polio disease from Pakistan.

He said the national polio vaccination drive would target millions of children in the country to save their future and health.

Pakistan reported its first polio case of 2025 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Dera Ismail (DI) Khan on January 22.

In 2024, a total of 73 cases were reported. Of those, 27 were from Balochistan, 22 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 22 from Sindh, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.

Polio is a paralysing disease that has no cure. Multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five is essential to provide children high immunity against this terrible disease.

The Pakistan Polio Programme conducts multiple mass vaccination drives in a year, bringing the vaccine to children at their doorsteps, while the Expanded Programme on Immunisation provides vaccinations against 12 childhood disease free of charge at health facilities.

This year’s first Polio vaccination campaign is scheduled to be conducted from February 3–9, 2025, nationwide.