Pakistan has reported its ninth polio case of 2026, after a seven-month-old boy in Khyber district tested positive for the virus.
| Province | Cases | Districts |
|---|---|---|
| Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | 7 | Khyber 3, Bannu 3, North Waziristan 1 |
| Sindh | 2 | Karachi East 1, Sujawal 1 |
| Total | 9 | — |
Case location
The National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) confirmed the case on Thursday, 5 November. The child is from Mastak union council in Bara tehsil, Khyber district, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
It is the third case from Khyber district this year and the seventh from the province. Of the nine cases reported across Pakistan in 2026, seven are from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — three from Khyber district, three from Bannu and one from North Waziristan — and two are from Sindh, one each in Karachi East and Sujawal.
Afghanistan link
Health officials say the virus in all three Khyber cases carries genetic links to poliovirus strains circulating in Afghanistan, which has reported 50 cases this year. Pakistan and Afghanistan remain the only two countries in the world where wild poliovirus is still endemic, and the border districts have long been the hardest place to stop transmission.
2026 in context
The numbers are still far better than recent years. Pakistan reported 74 polio cases in 2024 and 31 in 2025. Nine cases so far in 2026 is a sharp fall, but officials warn that a single missed child can restart transmission in a district where the virus is already circulating.
Pakistan has cut polio cases by 99.8 per cent since the early 1990s, from an estimated 20,000 cases a year to 31 in 2025. That long fall is why each new case still draws a national response, and why the border districts, where vaccination teams face the hardest conditions, remain the focus of every campaign.
Vaccination campaign
A door-to-door vaccination campaign is currently under way in 97 districts, including Khyber, aiming to immunise nearly 24 million children. The campaign matters most in the districts where cases keep appearing, because routine immunisation alone has not reached every child there.
The eighth case of the year, reported days earlier, was also from Khyber district: a 13-month-old girl. Two cases in the same district within days is what pushed officials to flag cross-border circulation again.
