olio paralysis in 21 children exposes deep failures in Pakistan’s eradication efforts
The year 2025 was supposed to bring Pakistan closer to eradicating polio, a disease the rest of the world has already consigned to history. Instead, the country finds itself in the global spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
Twenty-one children have been left paralysed this year, their futures irreversibly altered by a virus that persists only in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
With two additional cases recently confirmed in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the total number of reported infections has now climbed to 23, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Each case is more than a statistic. Each is a grim reminder of institutional neglect, political short-sightedness, and societal mistrust that continue to sabotage eradication efforts.
The global contrast
Polio was once a global scourge, feared for the paralysis it inflicted on the young and the devastating toll it took on families and communities.
Through decades of international cooperation, widespread immunisation drives, and scientific persistence, the world has managed to eliminate the disease in every region except two. Pakistan’s continued struggle is not just a national health failure but a glaring outlier in global public health.
The contrast is damning. Countries far poorer, far less stable, and once equally burdened with polio have eradicated it.
Yet in Pakistan, the virus not only survives but thrives in regions plagued by poor governance, disinformation, and insecurity. The persistence of polio here is not the result of scientific limitations but of systemic dysfunction.
A catalogue of new cases
The latest confirmations from NIH underscore how entrenched the problem remains.
A 16-month-old girl from Union Council Mullazai in Tank district and a 24-month-old girl from Union Council Miran Shah-3 in North Waziristan are the newest victims.
Their paralysis is permanent, their lives forever altered. They join a growing list of children whose futures have been compromised by a preventable disease.
The situation is hardly confined to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In August, Dawn reported two other cases: a six-year-old girl in Kohistan and a 21-month-old girl in the Badin district of Sindh.
Earlier in the year, polio’s presence was confirmed in sewage systems across the country.
In April, the NIH found the virus in 36% of sewage samples taken from 87 districts, a clear indicator of ongoing community transmission.
In 2024, the figures were even more staggering, with at least 71 cases reported and the virus found in nearly 90 districts, stretching from Punjab to Pakistan-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan.
The persistence of failure
The failure is not due to a lack of knowledge. The oral polio vaccine (OPV) has been available for decades and is proven to protect against the virus.
The science is clear: repeated doses are essential for every child under five, along with routine immunisations. And yet, Pakistani children continue to miss these life-saving protections.
Part of the problem lies in geography. Children in remote and hard-to-reach areas, particularly in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, remain beyond the regular reach of health workers. But the deeper failures are social and political.
Vaccine hesitancy, fuelled by misinformation campaigns that paint polio drops as harmful or conspiratorial, continues to plague immunisation drives.
Extremist propaganda has portrayed vaccination workers as agents of foreign agendas. In some regions, health teams have been attacked, sometimes fatally, simply for doing their jobs.
A society undermined by mistrust
At the root of Pakistan’s polio problem is mistrust—mistrust of the state, of science, and of international initiatives.
Communities that have long felt marginalised by the state are more inclined to resist what they perceive as externally imposed campaigns.
In the vacuum of reliable governance, rumour becomes more powerful than evidence. The claim that polio drops cause infertility or are part of a Western ploy continues to circulate, despite decades of counterevidence.
This mistrust is compounded by governance failures. Health campaigns are often erratic, politicised, or underfunded.
The very communities most in need of consistent medical outreach are the ones most often failed by an absent state. For these populations, scepticism is not irrational—it is a learned response to decades of neglect.
The burden on children
The true weight of these failures falls on children. Paralysis from polio is irreversible.
It robs children not only of mobility but of opportunity, independence, and dignity. Families already struggling in impoverished or conflict-affected regions must now shoulder the additional burden of lifelong care.
Each new case represents not just a child, but a community deprived of trust in its institutions, and a nation unable to fulfil one of the most basic obligations of governance: to protect the health of its youngest citizens.
Sewage as silent witness
The discovery of the virus in sewage samples is perhaps the most damning evidence of all. It shows that polio is not confined to isolated cases in remote corners but circulates in urban centres and across provinces.
Sewage, the silent witness, reveals what official numbers often obscure: that Pakistan is living with a simmering epidemic beneath the surface of its society.
When 36% of sewage samples test positive for the virus, it means the chain of transmission is alive and well. It means the virus has not been cornered but continues to exploit the gaps in vaccination coverage and the fractures in social trust.
The isolation of a nation
By failing to eradicate polio, Pakistan isolates itself. The rest of the world sees its struggle not as a local issue but as a potential global threat.
As long as the virus exists anywhere, it risks returning everywhere. International health agencies have poured resources, personnel, and expertise into Pakistan’s campaigns, but without political will and societal trust, their efforts are undermined.
The world grows weary of a problem that persists not because of impossibility, but because of preventable failures.
A national disgrace
The paralysis of 21 children in 2025 alone should be treated as a national disgrace.
It is a mark of collective failure that in a country with access to vaccines, with international support, and with decades of accumulated experience, children continue to contract a disease eradicated almost everywhere else.
These children did not choose to be born into regions of neglect, insecurity, or misinformation.
They did not choose to inherit the burden of a virus that should have been eliminated long before their birth.
Their paralysis is the consequence of choices made by leaders, by institutions, and by a society that has allowed fear and suspicion to triumph over evidence and responsibility.
A future in paralysis
Pakistan’s polio crisis is not just about health. It is a mirror reflecting the deeper fractures of governance, trust, and social cohesion.
The virus thrives because the state is inconsistent, because misinformation is stronger than outreach, and because vulnerable communities are treated as afterthoughts rather than citizens with rights.
For the 21 children paralysed this year, the future has already been rewritten in pain and limitation.
For the countless others still at risk, the threat remains immediate and unforgiving. And for Pakistan, the persistence of polio is not just a public health failure—it is a national tragedy, a stain on its global reputation, and a warning that neglect has consequences measured in broken lives.