Pakistan reports fifth polio case of 2026 in a 17-month-old girl from Bannu

A 17-month-old girl in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bannu district has contracted polio, making her Pakistan’s fifth case of 2026, the polio eradication programme confirmed on Tuesday.

The child is from the Khandar Khankhel union council in Domel tehsil of Bannu district, Dawn reported. Four of this year’s five cases have come from Bannu Division, three of them from Bannu district itself, an official at the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) said.

Far fewer cases than before

Even with the new case, 2026 has been Pakistan’s best year against polio in a long time. This year’s five cases, four in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and one in Sindh, compare with:

• 31 cases in 2025
• 74 cases in 2024
• about 20,000 cases a year in the early 1990s

The programme said vaccination had cut cases by 99.8 percent since the early 1990s. But it warned that “no child will be safe from polio until every child is vaccinated and safe”.

Anwarul Haq, head of the Pakistan Polio Programme, said the current year “has proved to be much better in terms of performance”. Officials credit better vaccination campaigns and the approach of winter, when the virus becomes dormant in the cold and spreads less easily.

A big campaign, just finished

The case was confirmed days after a week-long campaign ended on September 27. More than 28.2 million children were vaccinated in that drive, the programme said.

It was one of four large-scale vaccination campaigns Pakistan has run in 2026, which together have reached more than 45 million children, The Express Tribune reported.

Health authorities warned that the fight is not over. “Continued detection of the virus indicates that the risk to children persists, particularly in areas where transmission remains entrenched,” officials said.

A disease that vaccines stop

Polio “can cause lifelong paralysis and, in some cases, death”, but it is “prevented through safe and effective vaccines”, the Tribune noted, the same vaccines used in 195 countries. There is no cure once a child is infected, which is why repeated doses in every campaign matter.

Bannu: the last hard place

The new case highlights the one part of the country that worries experts most. Bannu Division, in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also includes the Lakki Marwat and North Waziristan districts. Security in Bannu is severe enough that polio workers have reportedly been kidnapped, making it hard for vaccination teams to reach every child. Experts describe Bannu as “the only place from where the polio virus can bounce back”.

That is why each case from the area matters so much. Where teams cannot reach children, the virus survives, and from there it can spread again to other parts of the country.

Why it matters

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the last two countries where wild poliovirus still circulates. Each child protected brings eradication closer, and each case in a hard-to-reach area such as Bannu shows how much work remains. Read our report on the campaign that vaccinated more than 28 million children.

This article draws on reporting by Dawn and The Express Tribune.