KARACHI: In Sindh, nearly 35,000 parents have reportedly refused to have their children vaccinated against polio, with the majority of refusals coming from Karachi. The Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme, in collaboration with the Expanded Program on Immunisation (EPI), had conducted a vaccination campaign from September 1 to 7 in 25 districts across the province.
The campaign aimed to vaccinate 2.1 million children, but a significant number of children, especially in Karachi, were left unvaccinated. Sources revealed that out of the total 35,000 refusals, approximately 34,000 were reported from Karachi, with the highest number of refusals coming from District East, where over 8,000 parents declined to administer the vaccine.
This comes just a day after Sindh recorded its seventh polio case of 2025, with an eight-month-old girl in Hyderabad confirmed to have the poliovirus. So far, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has reported the most polio cases with 18, followed by Sindh with seven, and Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan with one case each.
A new nationwide polio vaccination campaign is scheduled to begin on October 13 and will run until October 19, aiming to vaccinate around 45.4 million children across the country. The upcoming campaign will involve more than 400,000 workers and is critical in the fight to eradicate polio, a highly infectious and incurable disease that can cause lifelong paralysis.
