Karachi: About 35,000 parents in Sindh have refused to have their children vaccinated against the poliovirus, with the most refusal from Karachi, sources have said.
The Pakistani polio exhaust program, which worked together with the extensive program for immunization (EPI), had held a vaccination campaign in 25 districts in the province from 1 to 7 September.
The last campaign initially focused on 2.1 million children, but a considerable number of children in Sindh, in particular Karachi, did not remained -vaccinated, according to the sources.
The insiders added that of the total 35,000 refusal in the province, about 34,000 were reported from Karachi when parents refused to manage the vaccine to their children.
They said that the highest number of refusals was reported from the East District of Karachi.
“More than 8,000 parents refused drops of polio vaccine to manage their children in district East,” the sources revealed.
The revelation came only a day after Sindh recording his seventh polio case from 2025, with a child in the Hyderabad district confirmed that it had the poliovirus.
According to the regional reference laboratory for polio extremity at the National Institute of Health (NIH) of Islamabad, the latter case was an eight-month-old girl from Hyderabad.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) is at the top of the list of 18 polio cases, followed by Sindh’s seven cases. Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan have reported one case so far this year.
In the meantime, another national polio vaccination campaign starts on October 13 and runs until October 19.
The ride – with participation of more than 400,000 employees – is aimed at vaccinating around 45.4 million children throughout the country for protection against polio.
The upcoming vaccination campaign will follow the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) for the Subnational Poliovaccination Campaign of Polio Eradication, which took place earlier this month.
The vaccination drive was carried out in 88 districts of the country, including Hyderabad, up to around 21 million children under the age of five.
Polio is a highly contagious and incurable disease that can cause lifelong paralysis.
The only effective protection is due to repeated doses of the oral polio vaccine (OOG) for each child younger than five during each campaign, together with the timely completion of all routine immunisations.
