A girl posing with her finger marking in Samanabad Town, Lahore. WHO/A.S.Khan

2 November 2017 – Pakistan has launched the first sub-national immunization days (SNIDs) campaign of the current low transmission season on 30 October 2017, targeting more than 21 million children under the age of 5. The campaign has taken place in a total of 95 districts/agencies/towns of the country. The majority of districts concluded the SNIDs on 2 November, while three districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa including Chitral, Dir Lower and Dir Upper as well as Lahore will start the campaign on 6 November.

Over 145 000 trained and dedicated sehat muhafiz have worked to vaccinate children this week by going from house to house. To ensure maximum coverage, the core polio reservoirs of Karachi, Quetta block, Khyber Agency and Peshawar, have been covered through community-based vaccination approach, in which the team members are nominated and selected from the community itself.

The current polio epidemiology in the country is best ever observed. The number of wild poliovirus cases has declined from 306 in 2014 to 54 in 2015 and only 20 in 2016. Momentum is maintained in 2017 where the current case count of 5 compares to 18 at same point in time during 2016.

To stop the poliovirus transmission and achieve high population immunity, the Pakistan polio programme is implementing an intense vaccination campaign schedule. The current campaign is the second of the 9 high-quality supplementary immunization activities, including 5 national immunization days, to be implemented in Pakistan during the 2017–2018 low transmission season for polio.