Polio decline in Pakistan by 2025: Infections to be halved
Pakistan has made remarkable progress in its long battle against polio, with official data showing a significant decline in the number of cases recorded during 2025, falling to less than half of the cases detected in the previous year, 2024. This development is a strong positive indicator of the success of the health strategies recently adopted in one of the last strongholds of the virus in the world.
According to Anwar-ul-Haq, coordinator of the National Emergency Operations Center for Polio Eradication, health authorities recorded only 30 cases of the potentially paralyzing disease in 2025, compared to 74 cases in 2024. This announcement is the culmination of intensive efforts by the Pakistani government in collaboration with international organizations.
Large-scale vaccination campaigns
These promising results came just two weeks after Pakistan launched one of its largest national polio vaccination campaigns of the year. The campaign aimed to reach approximately 45 million children under the age of five across the country, including remote and hard-to-reach border areas. These campaigns rely on a large number of health workers and volunteers who go door-to-door to ensure every child receives the necessary vaccine to build community immunity.
Regional context and global challenges
These figures are of paramount global importance, given that Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where wild poliovirus remains endemic. The continued presence of the virus in this region poses a threat to global health security, with the World Health Organization repeatedly warning that failure to eradicate the disease in these last strongholds could lead to its resurgence in countries previously declared polio-free.
Efforts to eradicate polio in the region face numerous challenges, including security difficulties in some tribal areas, the ongoing movement of people across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the continued need to counter misinformation about vaccines. However, the significant decrease in cases this year indicates an improvement in the effectiveness of surveillance and monitoring programs and the success of awareness campaigns in convincing local communities of the importance of immunization.
Towards a future free from paralysis
Halving the number of cases is a pivotal step towards achieving the ultimate goal of "zero" cases. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, in partnership with the Pakistani government, is intensifying environmental monitoring to detect any presence of the virus in wastewater, ensuring its containment before it causes new human infections, with the hope of declaring the world free of this devastating disease in the near future.
