The total number of poliovirus cases recorded in Pakistan this year climbed to 24 on Saturday after a two-and-a-half-year-old child from Sindh’s Hyderabad was diagnosed with the virus.
According to sources at the National Emergency Operations Centre, the child, hailing from Hyderabad’s Neronkot area, was left paralysed by the virus, marking the city’s second polio case,.
The latest case in Hyderabad takes the province’s total number of children affected by the current poliovirus outbreak to five.
The latest polio case comes a day after authorities had confirmed that a 10-month-old baby girl in district Kohat of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was diagnosed with the virus, marking the northwestern province’s second case this year.
The infant from Tehsil Darra Adamkhel had contracted the wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) that left her paralysed on September 12.
Before that, authorities had confirmed that a 30-month-old boy from Pishin, Balochistan, was struck by the poliovirus marking the province’s 15th case this year.
All these cases were reported within this week marking almost a daily growth in the number of polio cases, leading to increased scrutiny of the country’s polio eradication efforts.
