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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday told the global Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) that the country has entered a decisive phase in its decades-long fight against polio, claiming the virus has been pushed into a shrinking number of high-risk areas but cautioned that persistent insecurity in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remains the biggest obstacle to reaching every child.
The IMB — an independent oversight body of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative — met from July 20 to 23 to assess global eradication efforts, with a particular focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan, the world’s only two countries where wild poliovirus remains endemic.
During a high-level review meeting of the IMB in Geneva, Pakistani officials claimed that the country’s strategy was delivering results, while acknowledging that failure to eliminate transmission from the remaining hotspots could jeopardise years of progress.
Pakistan informed the board that it had reduced polio cases by 99.8 per cent since the early 1990s, when an estimated 20,000 children were paralysed annually.
