ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) said on Tuesday that the nation was on a “strong path” toward polio eradication, after authorities conducted the last nationwide anti-polio vaccination drive of the year a few days earlier.
Pakistani health authorities conducted the last nationwide anti-polio vaccination of 2025 from Dec. 15-21. The NEOC earlier this week said it had vaccinated a total of 44.6 million children under the age of five during the seven-day campaign across the country.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries where transmission of the wild poliovirus has never been interrupted, posing a risk to global eradication efforts. The virus, which can cause irreversible paralysis, has no cure and can only be prevented through repeated oral vaccination.
“The NEOC reaffirms that Pakistan is on a strong path toward polio eradication,” the authority said in a statement.
It noted that health volunteers vaccinated over 22.8 million children in Punjab, over 1 million in Sindh, over 7.1 million in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and over 2.5 million children in Balochistan during the campaign.
