Islamabad: An eight-month-old infant in Pakistan’s North Waziristan district was found to be parlaysed by the poliovirus, increasing the number of cases detected this year to 11, as compared to just one in 2021.
All the 11 cases have been detected in North Waziristan, with eight of them in the district’s Mir Ali area, reports Dawn news.
According to an official from the Ministry of National Health Services, the latest case also belonged to Mir Ali.
“Emergency measures adopted by the Pakistan Polio Programme have so far contained the virus in the southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” the official claimed.
The new case comes after the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a new report on Friday in which it said Pakistan was among the four countries reporting the wild poliovirus (WPV) besides Afghanistan, Mozambique and Malawi.
Meanwhile, suspicion has also fallen on Pakistan as being the source of the poliovirus detected in sewage samples in London for the first time in the last four decades.
However, health authorities in Islamabad claim the “vaccine-derived virus” found in the UK exists in 22 countries and the type found locally was the WPV, reports Dawn news.
(IANS)
