ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s environmental surveillance for July 2025 has shown remarkable progress in Balochistan, where only one sewage sample in Quetta tested positive for the poliovirus, signalling the province’s near interruption of transmission.
However, Karachi continues to pose a serious threat as the largest urban reservoir of the virus, while Lahore is also sustaining transmission.
Officials remain concerned about South Khyber Pakhtunkhwa due to persistent access challenges hampering vaccination efforts.
According to the latest data from the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC), 127 sewage samples were collected from 87 districts nationwide during July.
Laboratory testing at the Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health confirmed 75 samples as negative and 42 as positive, with 10 still under process. While the overall trend reflects a decline in positive detections compared to earlier this year indicating the impact of repeated high-quality vaccination campaigns, poliovirus circulation persists in key areas.
Balochistan reported 22 negative samples out of 23 tested, a dramatic improvement from January when 15 sites were positive. In Quetta Block, six of seven sites tested negative.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded 24 negative samples, with positive detections dropping from 14 in January to seven in July, including three in the hard-to-reach South KP region.
In Punjab, positive sites decreased from 15 in March to 12 in July. Sindh recorded 19 positive samples, with the number of districts showing virus presence falling from 20 in March to 12 in July.
In Islamabad, three out of five sites tested positive, while all processed samples from Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir remained negative.
Officials credit the progress to six high-quality vaccination campaigns carried out over the past year, four of them nationwide, each reaching more than 45 million children. These sustained drives have reduced both confirmed polio cases and positive environmental samples, strengthening Pakistan’s push towards eradication. However, experts caution that the virus can resurge quickly if vaccination coverage dips in high-risk areas.
The next sub-national polio vaccination campaign is scheduled for September 1-7, 2025, targeting 28 million children across 91 districts in all provinces and regions.
Health authorities are urging parents and caregivers to ensure their children receive polio drops during this round. In addition to oral polio vaccination, free routine immunisation is available for children up to 15 months of age, offering broader protection against preventable diseases. Health officials stress that eradicating polio remains a collective responsibility. While thousands of frontline workers deliver vaccines in the field, communities must counter misinformation, support vaccination teams, and ensure every child receives every dose on time to prevent lifelong paralysis.
Published in News Daily on 13-August-2025.
