Shakeel 
Polio vaccination campaign started from January in three phases, the state wise polio campaign went really well but 62,000 parents from whole country refused to vaccinate their children during the campaign. The most high number of refusals for vaccination came from Sindh.
37,008 parents from Sindh to vaccinate their children in anti-polio campaign, while 20305 parents from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa refused the vaccination, 141 from Islamabad, 4902 in Baluchistan and 36 in Punjab. Lowest rejection rate of polio vaccination was reported in Punjab.
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2.4 percent rejection rate is recorded from east Karachi, Kodangi district. Karachi south recorded 1.1 percent, 1.3 percent from Kimari district and Malir district recorded 0.9 percent refusal of polio vaccination. Hyderabad people declined at the rate of 0.2 percent for polio vaccination for their kids.
First cross border transmitted polio case
The polio campaign started in January after two positive cases reported in Lahore for wild polio virus. On January 19th The National Institute of Health’s National polio lab revealed that first case of polio virus of 2023 has been detected in Lahore and the virus origin was genetically related to Afghanistan’s Nangarhar virus detected in 2022.
This was the first case detected on basis of cross border transmission, the second sample of virus was detected on January 27 which was related to virus from southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
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While no polio case has been detected in Pakistan since last year but sudden disability of 20 children in KP proved the virus’s existence. The government of Pakistan once again decided to start anti-polio campaign for citizens of Pakistan. But the refusal of nearly 62000 parents is a serious concern. Making people aware about the seriousness of polio virus is still the need of time.
