179,128 children in Punjab, 137,532 in Sindh, 135,557 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 77,435 in Baluchistan, 14,309 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and 3,586 in Punjab’s neighbouring province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were still polio-unimmunized.
86,286 children were also missed during the anti-polio drive in various places, according to sources with knowledge of the development, while 403,559 youngsters were not present for three phases of the anti-polio drive.
According to officials in the health ministry, poliovirus was detected in the first month of 2023 in environmental samples taken in Lahore, the capital of Punjab. The virus is currently being genetically identified.
Sources said that the sewage sample taken from Lahore’s Gulshan-e-Ravi contained Type-1 wild poliovirus. On January 3, the health teams collected sewage samples from various Lahore neighbourhoods.
