KARACHI - This year's first polio case was detected in a one-year-old girl here on Wednesday, said health officials.
Fatima, one, is a resident Udab area of Karachi. The girl has never been vaccinated against polio. After this case, toll of polio-affected babies has climbed to 86 in the country. Besides Pakistan, the only two other countries where polio cases were reported last year were Nigeria (over 200 polio cases) and Afghanistan (over 60 polio cases). The major challenge, experts say, Pakistan currently facing in its fight against polio is attacks on health workers and vaccinators.
A number of polio vaccinators have been killed across the country while many have received death threats.
Efforts to tackle polio in the country have also been hampered over the years by local people's misconceptions and suspicions about vaccination. Resistance also comes from parents, often poorly educated and impressionable, who believe in wild conspiracy theories about the polio vaccine.
The misconceptions, experts believe, about the anti-polio campaign, especially in tribal communities, have increased after Dr Shakeel Afridi's fake polio campaign.
According to the World Health Organisation, more than 3.5 million Pakistani children missed out on polio vaccination when over a dozen immunisation workers were shot dead in various parts of the country.