ISLAMABAD: Pakistan reported its fifth polio case of the ongoing year on Tuesday, with the virus affecting a 17-month-old girl in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bannu Division.

The affected girl is from the Khandar Khankhel union council of Domel tehsil in the Bannu district, a National Emergency Operations Centre official told Dawn. He added that four of this year’s five cases in the country had been detected in the Bannu division and three among them were from the Bannu district.

The development was also confirmed on the website of Pakistan’s polio eradication programme.

The statement on the website said vaccination had reduced polio cases by 99.8 per cent, from an estimated 20,000 cases in the early 1990s to and five so far this year, but transmission remained persistent in southern KP.

“This new case underscores the urgent need to maintain strong surveillance and vaccination efforts nationwide, because no child will be safe from polio until every child is vaccinated and safe,” it said.

With four cases detected in KP and one Sindh in the ongoing year so far, the tally remains considerably lower than 31 cases recorded in 2025 and 74 in 2024.

Officials expect a significant decrease in the 2026 polio tally compared to the past two years.

Officials attribute the drop to improved vaccination campaign performa­n­­ce and the onset of winter, which is said to be as a low-transmission season because the virus becomes largely dormant in cold temperatures.

“The ongoing calendar year has proved to be much better in terms of performance. More­over, as we have entered into the low-transmission season, there are fewer chances of polio cases,” Anwarul Haq, head of the Pakistan Polio Programme, told Dawn after the conclusion of the latest polio vaccination campaign in the country.*

The weeklong sub-national polio campaign concluded on Sept 27, and more than 28.2 million children were vaccinated during the drive.

But, severe security challenges threaten eradication efforts in the northwest, and the Bannu district remains a critical vulnerability.

“There are severe security-related issues in Bannu where not only polio campaigns are stopped, but at times polio team workers are also kidnapped,” a polio expert earlier pointed out to Dawn.

“There is a need to address the security-related issues in Bannu because it is the only place from where the polio virus can bounce back.”

Data released by Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Programme showed that a majority of the environmental samples for poliovirus collected during the first two months of 2026 had tested negative.

Moreover, a comparison of the first two months of 2025 with the current year shows a more than threefold reduction in positive environmental samples.

However, it had warned that the ongoing Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions could create an opportunity for the virus to rebound during the upcoming high-transmission season.

Polio is a highly contagious and incurable disease that can cause lifelong paralysis and, in some cases, death. It can, however, be prevented through safe and effective polio vaccines.