ISLAMABAD: A 17-month-old girl in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bannu division tested positive for poliovirus, taking this year’s tally of cases from across the country to five.

Among the five cases confirmed so far in the country, four have been detected in Bannu division alone while a single case was reported in Sindh, an official of the National Emergency Operations Centre confirmed to Dawn on Tuesday.

The latest case is from the Khandar Khankhel UC of Domel tehsil in Bannu district, the official said.

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

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.

Bannu division has reported four out of the five polio cases detected so far this year

“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 recent countrywide polio vaccination campaign.

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.

According to the official website of Pakistan’s polio eradication programme, vaccination had reduced polio cases by 99.8 per cent, from an estimated 20,000 cases in the early 1990s to 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.

However, the ongoing Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions could create an opportunity for the virus to rebound.

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.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2026